by Ray Ollis
‘How do we know they won’t change their channels, sir?’
‘We don’t know. But we can check at the start of each raid and adjust transmitters accordingly.’
‘Adjust them in the air, sir?’
‘Yes. In the air.’
H-H reflected on this complication. ‘And what about the female operators? Couldn’t we carry women, too, sir?’
‘Women? In our bombers?’
‘Why not, sir? I’m sure we’d find volunteers.’
‘We’d find aircrew volunteers to rescue these female Specials at any sign of trouble.’
H-H smiled. ‘But what alternative is there, sir?’
‘I don’t know yet. But if there is no alternative I don’t doubt we’ll issue Waafs with chastity belts and send them flying with you.’
— 5 —
The CO had called a Flight and Section Commander’s conference for 0930 hours the following morning. As Hyde walked into the cosy, usually informal little office, he was surprised to see it crowded with every senior technical officer off the squadron. Both the Station Commander and the Base Air Vice-Marshal were present.
As soon as they were all present, the CO handed over to the AVM who went straight to the point. ‘One-o-one must beat these German tactics,’ he said, ‘and here’s how we’re going to do it. To jam all three simultaneous channels used by the Hun we shall transmit our jamming signal on the same three wave-lengths. That will mean more equipment in every aircraft. And we’re not going to put in just enough—three channels—we’re going to put in four, in case Jerry has an extra one up his sleeve too. Now, I can see Mr Marshall bursting to tell me the Lancaster’s wiring won’t stand the load. I know that. What we’ve got to do is put in more wiring. I know, too, it’s a big job and a fiddling one. And what’s going to make it even more fiddling is that Harris won’t let us take the squadron off operations to make the conversion. The war must go on. You’ll do the job when the aircraft are here to work on and they must not at any time be non-operational.’
Several officers exchanged glances and their eyes groaned.
‘But it’s an ill wind that blows no good,’ he continued, ‘and we do get something out of this. It’ll mean even more work for the ground staff but I know it’s going to delight the aircrew. While we’re boosting our Lancs’ wiring we will also fit them to take Gee1 for radar navigation. This means work. I know it. But I also know you’ll do it and do it quickly. Let this thought spur you on: until XYZ is functioning efficiently again men are being killed every time we fly, men who would otherwise have survived. Keep that in mind and I know you’ll break records. Now I’ll leave you to your CO who’ll set you each to work in your own way. Work with a will. And if there’s anything you want, tell me about it straight away and if it’s humanly possible I’ll get it.’
Then he left the meeting. Quickly. The brisk way he slammed the door behind him added even greater urgency to what he had said. Inspired, the technical staff were already settling down to the business they liked: getting their teeth into the job.
‘If we’re likely to have women in our crews …’ H-H left the sentence unfinished.
‘What’s suddenly so repulsive about women?’ asked Krink.
‘How could you ever feel love and tenderness for a woman after you’d been to war with one?’
‘Easy!’ said Krink. ‘It’d be a new approach. ‘Weren’t we over Berlin together?’ The romance of that’d lay ’em cold.’
‘Exactly,’ said H-H. ‘Cold! I want women tender and soft, not athletic and valiant.’
Krink turned to his neighbour—a pilot in the khaki uniform and rank of the South African Air Force—and pleaded for support. ‘What do you say, Bob? Would you kick a girl out of bed just because you discovered she’d had a distinguished career as an aviator?’
Bob—Lieutenant Robert Cahill—ran a freckled hand through his unkempt hair and smiled boyishly. ‘I doubt that in those circumstances I’d have broached the flying topic,’ he said.
‘Could a woman walk into debriefing after a raid,’ asked H-H ‘and then leap screaming onto a chair at sight of a mouse? She’d lack the courage to appear so uncourageous.’
They were interrupted by the Air Vice-Marshal coming in to briefing.
‘Is that guy always around?’ asked Cahill.
‘He’s usually around if anything important is happening. You just happen to have joined the squadron at a crucial time.’
That this was indeed a ‘crucial time’ could be felt in the air. Despite the AVM’s warning that all aircraft must remain operational during conversion, One-o-one had not been called upon to fly for several days, and during that time the modifications had been completed. Navigators and bomb-aimers had been training to use the new Gee; really working hard. The Specials were eager to air their new equipment.
‘Tonight,’ the AVM began without preamble, ‘Bomber Command will use, for the first time, a weapon that has been the topic of heated argument throughout top-level talks of all three services for a year. It is to be called ‘window’ and for once it is no secret. You can tell your Mum all about this one, because Jerry’s going to know before you even reach tonight’s target. In every aircraft are bundles of tin-foil, usually called ‘silver paper’. When you come into range of enemy radar you will start throwing these paper strips out so they will float in the sky behind you. Every metal strip will echo back a radar signal and be picked up on German radar screens. The boffins assure me that ten aircraft dropping window appear on a radar screen rather like a formation of a thousand. How the six hundred of you flying tonight will look I almost hate to think. Cologne got a shock when a thousand bombers appeared on their screens; tonight, Nürnberg will have a fit because they’re going to see what’ll look more like sixty thousand.’2
The flyers goggled with delight at this picture of German perplexity.
‘This is not a new thing; we’ve had it a year or more. But British military policy forbids the use of any weapon for which we have no counter-measure. For window there is no counter. So we have not used it. But bomber losses have been so heavy that Command want to use it even so, and have constantly pleaded for permission to do so. At last, contrary to policy and still against much opposition, we have that permission.’3
‘Tonight you have added radio coverage too, so be sure you let no messages through; always assuming the German radar operators can untangle the mess on their screens sufficiently to find a message worth sending.’
Then he grew suddenly more serious. ‘There is one man they will be able to discover, though, and he’s the man who gets off track and outside the bomber-stream. He will appear as one, solid radar dot, unhidden by the responses behind him caused by his own window. Hereafter, more than ever, these stragglers will be attacked. So you’ll have plenty of vital XYZ work to do. And make sure that you are not amongst the stragglers. You’re lucky to have Gee. But it means more work, not less. More work for greater accuracy. As your aids improve your work doesn’t get easier; it gets harder. Remember that, and put those aids to work.’
Out at the aircraft the excitement of briefing gave way to the wilder, more intense excitement of the approaching raid, and the flyers were inside Queenie long before necessary. They wanted to see their new aids.
Johnnie was giving himself a final check on his band transmitters; closing his eyes and putting his hands on each unit in turn; checking that he literally could do it in the dark.
Vincent was admiring his Gee-set. The grey metal box, like a four-gallon kerosene tin on its side, with a round, green glass screen and many coloured knobs facing his desk, looked more like a toy than a weapon of war. It could not be switched on until the engines were running, so they just gazed lovingly at it.
Then they all studied the ‘window’. It, too, had little entertainment value in its present form. But still the flyers, hardly more than boys and all just boys at hears, fingered and admired their latest toys with gay anticipation. Like the children they had been only a few year
s before, on Guy Fawkes’ afternoon, playing with fireworks which, until the night when they would be lit, were just so much trash.
Students of natural history have studied flocks of birds altering course in flight. Every wing dips and turns on an instant, as though to a word of command. Some theorise that the command is given telepathically. Any aviator who has flown in a bomber stream, even isolated by radio-silence, can believe this theory. Waves of feeling—excitement, fear, exhilaration, even panic—can sweep through a flight of aircraft influencing every sensitive man and making him respond to its message. Such a wave swept the stream now. The first bombers to come abreast of the French coast started windowing. Perhaps it was their joy that permeated through to their comrades as the leading crews released the first ever life-saving window used in action. Perhaps it was an amused awareness of the German panic as they saw thousands upon thousands of solid blips dancing on the searching radar screens. Perhaps it was just a primitive, intrinsic awareness; a mob instinct. Whatever the explanation, the crew of Q-Queenie caught the sudden impulse of joy.
‘One minute to French coast-in,’ Vincent said. ‘Start windowing now.’
And, as the bomb-aimer started dropping the tinsel strips, a few at a time, each man had become a part of that wild, unspoken paroxysm of soul-felt joy.
‘I’ll give you the exact time we cross the coast, nav,’ said Joe.
‘No!’ said Vincent. ‘Let me tell you. I’ve got it spot-on with Gee. We’re dead over the coast at latitude fifty degrees eighteen minutes … now!’
‘Half a second late,’ laughed Joe. ‘Haven’t you learnt to use that thing yet?’
‘That’s because the skipper was half a degree off course.’
Hyde did not defend his flying. Any pilot who never gets more than half a degree off course is so far above average that what appeared to be badinage was actually praise.
Spirits and hopes were high. As they flew across France and into Germany they felt their high hopes justified. Flak, when they encountered it, was light and wild. Johnnie had reported an excited confusion on German radio. The Hun stood dazed by the new tactics, like a boxer out on his feet. The Germans shook their heads to clear their vision, but when they looked again the scene was as hazy as before.
‘We’ve bowled ’em a googly this time,’ said Joe. ‘Every ball a wicket!’4
It was along the Rhine that they first noticed the fog; light, wispy stuff at first. Then steadily it thickened, flat and dull, blanketing everything.
‘Sometimes I think they’ve got God on their side,’ said Bill, peering over his bomb-sight at a grey sea of nothingness.
‘Nonsense!’ said Magnetic. ‘It would never occur to God to support anyone but the British.’ He meant it as humour, but it had a ring of shocked sincerity.
But it was obvious that the deterioration in the weather had disappointed them all. Everything had looked so right. The trip was going so well. The opposition was slight and disjointed. Vincent kept telling them exactly where they were; he couldn’t resist it, he was so overjoyed at knowing it himself. With reduced opposition permitting them to mark accurately, PFF could have done an exact job. Altogether it could have been the perfect attack. But now a thin layer of fog had come to spoil it.
‘Five minutes to TOT,’ said Vincent. ‘I know exactly where we are, so even if we have to bomb on ETA we’ll still be spot-on.’ He sounded optimistic but the crew could not hide their disappointment. Maybe all Gee-equipped aircraft would bomb accurately. But, with a little luck, every aircraft could have done so. It was such a wonderful opportunity—spoilt.
‘Thah can’t see nowt down thar,’ Bill mumbled.
‘Keep eyes sharp just t’same, lad,’ Vincent answered him in studied Yorkshire. ‘Markers be ’bout t’fall reet soon.’
Sullenly the men watched the sombre fog, swirling four miles below; beneath it Nürnberg was skulking, smugly safe. And then, like a torch switched on beneath a muddy pond, a red-brown glow appeared.
‘Eeeh! Look!’ cried Bill. ‘Thah can see t’markers clear through it. Look! Thah’s more an’ all!’
The dull red glow was suddenly joined by grey-greens and then some misty yellow. Candle bombs through the fog! Bombs had begun to fall, and as the blasts rent jagged holes in the fog blanket, there were instants when the vivid markers shone through with greater brilliance in contrast with their fog-grey backdrop.
Six hundred bombers saw it, and every long black nose turned to the attack.
‘Eeeeh! Luvly!’ said Bill. ‘We’re tracking for dead centre, skip. Just hold her steady … steadeee … steadeee …’
It was to be a nine-minute attack: six hundred bombers carrying 2,300 tons of bombs. That was the plan, and now, remorselessly, that plan was becoming a fact. Within one minute the concentration of bombs on central Nürnberg had melted the fog away. Surrounding fog hid everything but the target. Like a blood-red cherry in a vast plate of porridge it clamoured for every eye’s attention; from the heart of an uninviting mess it beckoned—the one choice morsel. And how each bomber relished it.
‘Bombs gone!’ said Bill, and Vincent checked the time: with ten seconds of his ETA. He patted the Gee box affectionately.
Almost at the instant of bombing—certainly not longer than half a second afterwards—Q-Queenie’s lurch as her heavy bombs fell was shaken with a staccato shudder. Quickly the smell of cordite filled their oxygen-masks, pungent and frightening. Instantly every man tensed, wondering if Queenie had been hit.
Then in a flash, before they had time to decide what had happened or what to do, Joe’s voice crashed in their ears: ‘I got him! I got him!’
‘You got what?’ asked Hyde, not without irritation.
It was Yarpi’s voice that spoke next, almost choked with excitement. ‘He’s blown up! Gee, man! He’s blown up!’
‘You bloody beaut!’ cried Joe. ‘You bloody beaut!’
Hyde spoke, terse and commanding. ‘Stop shouting and tell me what’s going on.’
‘I got a Ju 88,’ said Joe. ‘He appeared as we were about to bomb.’
‘Why didn’t you give evasive action?’
‘It would’ve spoilt our bombing-run. I had him covered. And when he turned in I gave him a quick burst.’
‘He started burning, then suddenly blew up,’ added Yarpi.
‘You can still see him,’ continued Joe. ‘Low on our port beam. On fire.’
Hyde tipped Q-Queenie up on her left wingtip. A tiny comet burnt below them, falling quickly down and away to port. As they watched, the tiny spark vanished; and an instant later a mushy explosion bubbled up out of the fog north of Nürnberg.
‘Good shooting,’ said Hyde a little coldly. ‘But you should have told me it was there.’
‘I thought it might throw Bill off, sir.’
‘Okay. But you might try that once too often.’ Then suddenly Hyde’s tone changed.
‘Say! What a night this is!’ His voice was bubbling gaiety. ‘Just look at that target!’
All this had happened within little more than one minute of bombing. Queenie had bombed at her own appointed time of H-plus-four. It was now just after H-plus-five; the attack was little more than half over. But already the inferno that was Nürnberg had melted the fog for miles around it. Flames and explosions overlapped and inspired each other in seething competition. It looked like the birth of a gaseous world whirling through fog-filled space. And still the bombs rained down; cascading fuel to stoke the flames of hell itself. Still they fell; 2,300 tons in nine minutes; over 250 tons per minute; almost five tons per second.
The RAF had brought them but, more important, they had delivered them. Each factory’s quota had whistled almost straight down every tall chimney. Never before had they known such large-scale success. Targets had been hit before. Hit hard; even wiped out. MI5 had recently announced that, following the Remsheid raid, Germany had abandoned production of the feared He 113. But that was seventy aircraft raiding one factory successfully. Tonight the
force was increased almost a thousand per cent, and with similar devastating accuracy they had plastered an entire factory area. Rotterdam, London, Coventry were avenged and more; against vital military targets, not useless, helpless civilians.5
The Hun was learning what it means to fight a powerful enemy. Gone were his days of easy victory over half-trained, ill-equipped troops. Having failed to conquer vulnerable Britain for the air, Germany now face the double indignity of airborne defeat herself, despite a much-vaunted defence system. Germany had invented the aerial blitzkrieg, now the Allies were perfecting it. The mad scientist was threatened by his own robots.
Looking back, the crew of Q-Queenie saw Nürnberg encircled by fire: a flaming doughnut frying in boiling fog. Why was there so little fire in the centre? Had the vortex completely burnt itself out? They would learn the frightening answer to that question very soon.6
Opposition continued light. The only fighter they saw was the one Joe had dealt with so summarily. The fluttering cover of window continued; a few strips from each aircraft every ten seconds. Johnnie repeated the glad news that German radio was confused and excited. Vincent, sunk in the huge, coloured maps of curving lines which translated his Gee-readings into latitude and longitude, watched delightedly their passage straight along the required track, with hardly a waver to left of right. And behind them fell, fluttering brightly, the silver window, littering the German countryside like giant confetti. But no festive confetti, this. To the Hun it was no harbinger of joy. It was, instead, a dreadful threat: a symbol of wedded might and precise destruction.
‘Cop this,’ said Joe, holding up the morning paper. ‘It says ‘Target Located by Radar. In last night’s devastating attack on Nürnberg pilots located and marked the target by radar.’ How d’ya like that? ‘Pilots’ they say. The pilot couldn’t switch the set on, let alone use it. Don’t these journalists know that a pilot is exactly one-seventh of the crew of a Lanc?’7
‘One-eighth of a One-o-one squadron Lanc.’ corrected Johnnie.
It was a not-uncommon grouch amongst aircrew: to the public at large there was only one man in the aircraft—the pilot. Journalists, far from correcting the idea, encouraged it. The big trouble was that some pilots (not usually the good ones) believed it.