101 Nights

by Ray Ollis

  ‘Yes. Chiltern said Hyde shouldn’t really need a screen at all. He just cast me as understudy to keep me out of mischief.’

  ‘I’ll take her alone this afternoon,’ said Hyde. ‘I might be less nervous without a screen. Perhaps Chiltern is right. And he said he wants me operational quickly.’

  ‘Chiltern!’ exclaimed Vincent. ‘He can’t teach you a thing, Hyde. He hasn’t as much know-how in his whole body as you have in your little finger.’

  ‘This one?’, asked Hyde bitterly, holding up the twisted little claw of his left hand. ‘I’m afraid this is proof against mere know-how.’

  Vincent did not enjoy that lunch.

  Seasonal autumn thunderstorms lashed Ludford Magna that afternoon, but Hyde flew circuits and bumps in the bright intervals. The storms grew so frequent and the bright intervals so short, however, that Hyde decided to land and call it a day.

  A black, heavy cumulo-nimbus cloud hung threateningly near as he made his final approach. It was quite a good approach, but so slow that he was virtually committed to it when the squall hit him. When Queenie was twenty feet above the ground she was heading into wind straight down the runway.

  Before she was one foot lower, a side-current curled out of the menacing cloud in a way that only mariners and aviators know, and set her drifting across the runway quite alarmingly, flicking her windward wing high.

  It was a tricky moment, but one any pilot should have been able to meet. Hyde should either have overshot despite his low speed, or kicked his rudder to correct Queenie’s drift. But it had to be a split-second decision.

  In that split second Hyde tried to hold Queenie straight and land on the runway despite the cross-wind and drift. Queenie’s wing and tail tilted, one wheel hit the ground with a shuddering jar, not in the direction that the wheel was pointing, but at a drift-angle of twenty degrees. The olio-leg groaned, then snapped, the stabbing wingtip dug into the turf and Queenie ground-looped crazily, vaulting up on her nose and spinning over. Then she flopped clumsily back onto her belly, propellers buckling to a halt in the soft earth.

  One of the company was wounded and the wound was mortal. The victim was Queenie; she had broken her back.

  They pushed her over to the dump with a bulldozer and crushed her in with all the other aircraft that would never fly again.

  Vincent had seen the crash. So had Magnetic. They knew, without exchanging a word, what that death at his hands would mean to Hyde.

  Vincent was winning the paradoxical reputation amongst his navigators of an easy-going tyrant. He was not particularly worried about their punctuality on non-flying days. He seldom raised any objections about high-spirited rags in the section. If a man had missed breakfast Vincent would usually allow him to cycle to the nearby farm where bacon and eggs were served in the parlour. In fact, only two things seemed to concern him; one was that men must always be ready and fit for duty and the other was that, while they were flying, they must work hard.

  The ex-instructor navigator, Flight Lieutenant Slade, deplored Vincent’s laxness. Slade was an excellent navigator: fast, neat and accurate. But he thought that the easy-going squadron atmosphere compared ill with Training Command discipline. He had mentioned this to Chiltern, and Chiltern had considered it one of the strong points in Slade’s favour.

  Slade knew that Chiltern had recommended him for the post of nav leader. It is possible that this prompted Slade to ignore Vincent’s warning—perhaps Slade read insult into Vincent’s claim that even excellent navigators could be lazy and therefore dangerous.

  Slade’s crew were coming home from a night raid. They were heading south-west out of Germany. At the Allied front line they were to fly dead west then, at the French coast, alter course north for Base. Slade computed the course from the front line and, most unfortunately, read the required track from his flight plan for the north leg instead of the west leg.

  Consequently, he hit the front line on track but then flew away from the force, headed back into occupied Europe on his own. One radar fix, taken in forty seconds, would have shown him his error. But Slade did not usually make mistakes and he did not check. Twenty minutes later they flew into flak over Utrecht, were badly shot up, and were lucky to get home. As it was, both their gunners were killed.

  ‘You altered course and did not check for twenty minutes, Mr Slade,’ said Vincent. ‘Why? Wasn’t your equipment working?’

  ‘It was working,’ said Slade. ‘I just didn’t bother, I’m afraid. We had crossed the front line, we were tired after the long trip, and I relaxed. I’m sorry.’

  ‘It is unfortunate that it should be you, Mr Slade,’ said Vincent. ‘But I would do the same no matter who it was. I am putting you up for court martial. You have virtually killed two men.’

  The Squadron Commander, when Vincent put the matter before him, took Vincent aside.

  ‘You are quite right, you know,’ he said. ‘Slade deserves a court martial. But I’m not going to do it and I’ll tell you why. At Arnhem we have just suffered a more important defeat than you may know. That airborne landing was to have got us across the Rhine before the German army regrouped. To have won at Arnhem would have meant winning the war in Europe before winter. The Germans, poor fools, don’t realise that they have done themselves the greatest disservice; somebody must occupy Germany and if we don’t the Russians will and Germany will suffer far worse at their hands than they might at ours.1 But that’s an aside. Our chaps have been flying a lot lately; flying hard and flying well. We told them that if they did their job the war would be over by Christmas. Well, they have done their job, splendidly, but Arnhem has failed and the war will drag on for perhaps another year.

  We must guard against loss of morale on the squadron and nothing attacks morale like a court martial. Slade might deserve it, but the squadron doesn’t deserve the setback. Send Slade to me and I’ll give him a private trial that might mend his ways. You do understand, don’t you, Farlow? I agree with the serious view you take of this but I must do what’s best for One-o-one Squadron, that is the vital thing.’

  As Vincent walked out of the Squadron Commander’s office he felt humble for the littleness of his outlook that he had thought so liberal.

  They took off at six-thirty am for Duisburg. Magnetic’s commission had just come through but he had not had time to change the rank on his uniform.

  Hyde was flying this trip too. His first since Nürnberg. His old crew felt a warm glow of pride but around the edges gnawed the chill of the thought that this Hyde was only a shadow of the flyer that the other Hyde had been.

  The crews did not know it but this was to be a great day for Bomber Command. Flying with the force were four war correspondents. They had been told that Duisburg, Germany’s greatest inland port, and now only thirty miles behind the front line, was to be bombed off the map.

  It was barely a week since they had raided Germany in force during daylight for the first time. Now they headed for the Ruhr in daylight. Above them the Luftwaffe were diverted and drawn into combat by the fighter escort. Only occasionally did a Me 109 or FW 190 break through to attack the main force, and when it did the Lancasters and Halifaxes took wild evasive action and fired off Very lights which brought protecting Mustangs screaming from the sky to take the fight off their hands.2

  For some, the belligerent flyers of Bomber Command, this was a far more satisfactory war. Because they no longer had the darkness to overcome, much of the old skill was wasted; but with daylight the battle came into the open. For the man who preferred bullets to brains, who liked to see his enemy and fight him face to face rather than outsmart him with cunning and lose him in the night; for that man these major daylight raids on Germany were a welcome change from the fly-by-night raids that ran the German gauntlet but never came to grips.

  Almost a thousand heavy bombers swept into the Ruhr for the first Duisburg attack. The punishment they took seemed only fair in exchange for the blow they dealt. In daylight their bombs were not vague flashes in a
black sea, but sticks of bubble-bursting explosions3 amongst wharves, barges and railways. The men could see their vicious handiwork and such is the hate that war creates, the men delighted in it.

  In four bombers flew the four war correspondents, utterly ill at ease and lost, yet trying to understand it all. Trying, in a few airborne hours, emotion-packed and fearful, to grasp a way of life and reveal it to the world. Trying to see everything. Understanding so little of what they saw. Not knowing which voice came from where. Asking questions. Getting in the way.

  Nobody liked flying with war correspondents. And everybody knew that the story they told could never be the true story because no crew flies normally with the consciousness that every word, every action, every motion is being recorded, sifted, analysed and rehashed in a form designed to impress Mum and the kids. But those war correspondents knew something that very few of the aircrew knew; that within hours they would be back in the air, headed for Duisburg again.

  Snow and Smiff were surprised, and Squadron Leader Chiltern was annoyed, that Vincent, Magnetic, Krink and Yarpi rushed away the moment they landed to ask Hyde how he had fared.

  They found him nervous but elated. He admitted, now they had landed, that he had not welcomed the prospect of the Ruhr by day and added that, as Joe put it later, having broken his duck in his second innings made him feel a lot better. It was obvious from his manner, however, that he still found the wicket sticky.

  The second attack on Duisburg was by night and proved a routine Ruhr attack. The target was still blazing conveniently after the day raid so they found it with ease. They bombed the edges of the fires, where the firefighters would be. Aircrew had a firm dislike for the men who carefully put out the fires they had gone to so much trouble to light. And they bombed the dark patches which were not yet ablaze.

  At the second thousand bombers turned away the target was as brightly lit as it had been when they arrived that morning and the sun itself had shown the way. Duisburg was ‘on fire from end to end’, the surviving journalist wrote.

  Of the four war correspondents, only one survived the double raid. Unwillingly he found he had a scoop. Had the other journalists got in the way or asked one question too many at a vital moment? Or was it another fantastic war coincidence; a gruesome prank?4

  One came back and, awe dripping from his pen, wrote;

  In 18 hours Bomber Command sent out more than 2,600 aircraft and dropped more than 10,000 tons of bombs, including 500, 000 incendiaries, far more than the Germans dropped on London during the whole of the Blitz.5

  No Londoner could believe it possible.

  Most of the aircrews in the first raid on Duisburg did not fly on the second. They were therefore fresh to fly the next night. But they wanted XYZ cover—so 101 were obliged to fly again.

  The target was Wilhelmshaven and it was a dusk takeoff for a night raid. Even the calmest men were tired and on edge, and at briefing, Magnetic noticed that Hyde seemed exhausted. His hands were shaking and one corner of his mouth twitched when he spoke. It would have been both kind and wise to lighten his re-initiation, but war is impersonal and the cog must not complain when the war machine is geared high.

  As they set out over the North Sea Vincent was cursing his Gee box. On a trip with two long sea legs, Gee had broken down. He reported ‘no radar’ to Chiltern, adding the suggestion that to fly courses more carefully than usual would be a safe move. Over water without radar they could rely only on the stars. It was going to be a night of hard work, so Vincent settled down to force his tired brain and flagging body into sparkling action. It would not be a long trip: six hours at most. He felt that he could keep it up if Chiltern would co-operate.

  With the coming of radar, too many navigators had put star navigation behind them. When it was needed in such an emergency as this they then found themselves rusty. Vincent, however, had done so much astro-navigation during pre-radar days that there was little chance of his forgetting, and in addition he had continued taking and plotting sextant shots to keep his hand in, so now he fell quickly into the old routine.

  They were to cross the coast-in between two of the smaller Frisian Islands. All the Frisians were heavily defended. This landfall would be Vincent’s first check on how accurate his astro was proving. If it was right, they would pass between the defences; if not, they might fly straight into them. That was assuming that Chiltern flew at the correct course and airspeed which, Vincent noted with relief, he seemed to be doing.

  Two minutes before ETA coast, Magnetic reported flak on the port bow. It seemed that their groundspeed was right. Then came flak away to starboard. They evidently were tracking between islands. They prayed that they were between the right ones.

  Their track led south of Wilhelmshaven, then turned sharp north. If they were already north of track they would fly over the target before the attack opened; if south, they would arrive after the attack finished. Vincent gave the order to turn north to where they all hoped the target lay. In a few seconds the first colour markers would fall and then they would know.

  ‘Markers going down ten starb’d!’ said Magnetic suddenly. ‘Good show, nav.’

  They all breathed again.

  They bombed half a minute early.

  The target acted as a perfect fix, giving Vincent a wind to compute with and a point from which to start a new air plot. After the turmoil of Duisburg earlier in the day, Wilhelmshaven seemed a quiet target and they turned for home confidently.

  ‘We’ve crossed the coast-out,’ Vincent announced after a short time, and everybody relaxed, already relishing the sleep that must soon be theirs.

  Twenty minutes later, when they should have been seventy miles at sea, Vincent was shattered to hear Yarpi announce; ‘Flak on the starb’d quarter up.’

  ‘But there can’t be!’

  ‘It’s flak all right, nav.’

  ‘Navigator,’ said Chiltern. ‘If we’re still over land, where have we bombed?’

  ‘I don’t know, sir. I’ll check and let you know.’

  Vincent double-checked every line in his chart and every figure in his log. Then he checked his astro plotting and computation. Everything was right. He wondered if a gale had sprung up since the target. But figures proved that wind that strong simply could not be. The fact remained that if they were still over land they could not possibly have been over Wilhelmshaven at TOT. Yet they had bombed with the attack, not on their own. If they were still over Europe, how would that influence ETA England? It was a navigational picture of some contemporary school too obscure for Vincent to interpret. It seemed to fit no known pattern, and Chiltern kept pressing him for the explanation.

  It came after a few puzzling moments that had dragged like hours. A radio voice, possibly the Master Bomber’s, announced; ‘All Drummer aircraft beware flak ship at 53.21 north, 04.09 east.’

  A flak ship. Why had they not realised that? It could be nothing else. Perhaps three ops in thirty-six hours had stunned their minds.

  It was fortunate that their ETA England was not in doubt because there was no coast to be seen when they reached it. Fog had been predicted by met and fog there was. But fog was no longer the threat it had been at the time of Nürnberg when Hyde had been burnt. FIDO could bark and frighten fog from the ’drome. They found base and called up for instructions for landing by firelight.

  Hyde’s emotions were mixed as he approached Ludford above the swirling mists. He had been told what to expect and now, seeing it for the first time, fear of his old enemy jousted with rejoicing to win control of his thoughts.

  The fog lay flat and dark, but just above Ludford, lifted by the soaring heat surrounding the runway, a mushroom of fog billowed high into the sky. Around this cloudy column the many aircraft circled, waiting to be called down into the fog through which they would burst suddenly to see the firelit runway. Tonight’s only complication was a slight cross-wind; only one runway had FIDO, and this runway had to be used no matter where the wind blew. Fog, and drift on landing:
two bitter memories dogged Hyde’s exhausted mind. He waited to hear his order to land, excitement and terror turning his brain into a battlefield.

  When the order came he was starting the down-wind leg; he would have to fly right around the aerodrome to the point of approach. As he flew slowly around, skimming the fog top, the thousand nightmares he had dreamed since Nürnberg revived in his mind.

  Slowly his aircraft seemed to drag around to the approach point.

  Should he come down at the edge of the mushroom?

  No.

  That would be too close.

  But the further back he went, the more likely he was to descend into the distant fog, unbroken by the fires.

  Hyde slid down into the fog, straining forward for his first fiery glimpse of FIDO.

  It burst dazzlingly upon him. What joy to see dread fog defeated!

  Quickly he saw that he was not in position. He had cut the corner; he should be further back. Would it be wise to overshoot?

  Hyde appraised his height and speed and likely point of touchdown. This was the long runway. He could sideslip into position, land a third of the way down the tarmac and still stop with room to spare. He tipped his starboard wing and slid down across the bumpy air over the FIDO strip.6

  He was still a hundred feet high but lining up well when the petrol drip, from tanks he did not know had been damaged by the flak ship, trailed through FIDO’s flames. A climbing chain of fire, fading and flashing like a rope of brilliant jewels, curved up behind the new Q-Queenie.

  Twice, slipstream almost cut the spluttering wick in two, but fire sensed an old companion and would not loose its hold.

  For an instant the fire disappeared under the wing as if the climber shirked the highest summit.

  Then Queenie blew up and fell in a brilliant shower of fragments.

  Hyde, fire and fog had kept an old appointment.

  FIDO, made to save him, became his murderer.

  — 5 —

  ‘That’s the end of the kitty,’ said Vincent. He raised his glass to the men about him. ‘So for the last time—here’s to Hyde.’