by Ray Ollis
He tried to move his legs and found that the right one moved easily. Then Smiff noticed that the right foot was still crushed under the guns and, when he looked again, he saw that the leg was severed above the knee. He thought; ‘That could be the only explanation.’
He admonished his mind for thinking so logically and coldly at such a time, but it refused to change its tune. Smiff knew he should be swamped with terror and pain and horror and panic but all his mind would do was reiterate the logic that if his foot was trapped and his leg could move, then somewhere between they must be severed.
Smiff tried to move his left leg but it was jammed. His calm, infuriating mind now wondered if it was better to still have the leg and be trapped by it in the burning turret or if it would have been better to have lost that leg, too.
Then Smiff realised that he was still holding the turret control and that burning oil was spraying over his clothing. If he stopped doing that, he should feel better. He released the control and the oil stopped, but he did not feel any better. He grew annoyed, then bitterly disappointed because stopping the oil did not stop the heat and he started to cry. That was about the time Chiltern sent the others back to fight the fire.
N-Nuts had lost a mile in height, which meant she was down to about 4000 feet, when Vincent came forward to drop the bombs. The bomb doors would not open because of the lost hydraulics pressure, but he decided to loose the bombs anyway and let their weight force open the bomb bays.
To descend into the bombing hatch was hair-raising; Bill had taken the entire floor of the bomb-aiming compartment with him when he baled out. Vincent tried standing astride the gaping hatch, feet forced against the fuselage walls, but almost slipped through and his heart skipped.
He decided to try it a different way. He had Magnetic lie on the step above and support him with an arm through his parachute harness while he dangled over 4000 feet of nothing, selected the bomb stations and pressed the tit. The release arm swung correctly around, making its contacts, but no bumping and shuddering came to gladden them. The bombs had not gone. His terrifying dangling had been wasted. Vincent reported this to Chiltern and said that he would release the bombs by hand.
When Vincent had told Chiltern that there was fire in the bomb bays he had not known for certain that there was. Now he found it was true. All the bombs were on ‘safe’, but the 4000 cookie was a dangerous, unreliable bomb at all times, and he decided to drop that first.
Above each bomb station was a manual trip-lever. With difficulty Vincent forced the flame-hot lever and felt the two-ton bomb trundle its way through the spring-loaded doors. He was surprised to see that Krink, instead of fighting the fire, was fiddling with his smashed radio and that Yarpi was just standing there, staring at the flames.
He went to Yarpi to tell him to help release the other bombs, the thousand pounders, but Yarpi could only point at the fire and say, ‘Smiff’.
‘Oh, God! Is he still in there?’
Vincent was amazed that so much could happen as to fill their minds with things so near and so vital that a comrade ten yards away should be forgotten. Yarpi had been unable to approach nearer than the still-dancing flames because he had no gauntlets and goggles; it seemed unbelievable but despite Nürnberg Vincent was still the only one in the crew, and very nearly the entire squadron, who always carried them.
Vincent wondered if Krink and Yarpi could see through smoke without goggles. Perhaps that was why they stood helplessly by.
Shielding his face from the flames with his left arm he turned the turret manually until he could open the door and reach in. His mind, as fire closed and menaced around him, shrieked two things at him; ‘You must not damage his hands!’ and ‘Get out—your helmet is burning off!’.
The leather helmet, shrinking with the heat, was tightening around his skull, shrinking and sizzling until it felt one with his scorching scalp.
At first Vincent was too absorbed with the task of extricating Smiff to look at the man himself. Vincent caught Smiff under the armpits and tried to pull him free. Not until he realised Smiff was caught there did he examine the mangled, burning boy more closely.
Smiff turned his face towards Vincent, and the sight of it made Vincent ill. Despite the fire, he stood there and was sick, literally sick. The sightless eyes with eyeballs burst and dribbling, the inch-wide nostrils running red-brown blood, the shapeless, lipless hole that tried to speak, the mangled foot crushed in red-hot guns, the stump that bubbled as it bled and the whole, tortured, writhing body sickened him.
That reek of burning flesh which Vincent would never forget, and the painful swaying of the shapeless face, back and forth in slow arcs of agony showed that Smiff could never survive.
Vincent stepped back from the turret.
Beside the rear exit the emergency axe was clipped in its bracket. Unhurriedly and determinedly Vincent took it down.
Then he stepped back into the fire. His heart was racing but his brain was suddenly as clear and hard as a diamond; he had never been more sure that what he was about to do was right.
He took the axe in both hands, raised it a foot and chopped it powerfully into Smiff’s skull.
When he walked back from the fire and into the fuselage, Yarpi was still staring at the flames and wringing his hands and Krink was still tinkering with the radio. Vincent wondered how long it was since they had been hit and glanced at his watch. From six minutes before TOT to 1558—it must have been four minutes ago.
Could all this have happened in four minutes? It seemed impossible. He wondered if his watch had stopped from the heat but the second-hand was still moving.
He had caused one man to bale out over Germany, had himself dangled above a mile of empty sky, then dropped a two ton bomb he knew not where, stood in fire and tried to rescue a man, then finished up killing him. In four minutes!
While he thought this he had hurried to bring the other extinguisher, and now he and Magnetic were fighting back the flames—away from the bomb bays. Although the remaining bombs were stable thousand pounders, too much heat could upset them. Already the point-five shells were exploding in the ammunition trays. He wondered what could burn in the rear of the metal aircraft. Then he looked more closely and saw that the very metal was alight.
Suddenly he realised. For lightness, aircraft alloys contain magnesium; the same substance of which incendiary bombs are made. ‘We wonder why she burns!’ he mused, ‘yet N-Nuts is a fire bomb.’
When the extinguishers were finished the fire revived. They had hustled Yarpi into helping them and the three of them beat at the flames with Smiff’s singed parachute which had been protected in its tin rack, but the draught from the missing front hatch kept fanning the flames.
Vincent thought again of his navigation and returned to his desk. He checked Gee. What luck—it still worked! He took two readings and plotted them, frowned and checked. His gauntlets impeded him so he started removing them but the fire had stuck the leather to his skin so he decided to leave them on.
Again he took a Gee fix and plotted it. He could not believe what he saw. They were exactly two miles from where they had been hit and were flying around the spot in circles.
He went forward and checked Chiltern’s compass repeater. It was not working. Then he remembered that the master compass in the rear would be upset by the fire. Chiltern must be using the old pilot compass. Vincent saw that he was and that they were flying a westerly course. It was now 1601—surely they must be at least fifteen miles from where they were hit and back over Allied territory …
Then Vincent noticed the sun. It was wandering steadily across their bow. And all the while their compass pointed stalwartly to starboard. Vincent realised suddenly what was happening. Fire at one end of a complete metal skin was turning N-Nuts into a giant solenoid magnet. The compass was following the current around and around and Chiltern was carefully chasing it—flying in circles above the guns that had hit them. Why they did not fire again and end his misery Vincent could n
ot imagine. It all sounded impossible, but Vincent had heard of it happening before and it was certainly happening to N-Nuts now.
Chiltern was stubborn in his protection of the compass until Vincent succeeded in convincing him that if the compass needle really were pointing north, then the sun was lying nor’ nor’east. They had been shouting unpleasantly at each other, each certain that the other was a fool and each only aware that the other looked wild-eyed, exhausted and half-mad.
Chiltern hated to admit that he must be directed by this screaming, panic-stricken boy with white, swollen eyes, blackened face, grey, cracked lips and wearing gauntlets.
‘Why on earth gauntlets?’, Chiltern reflected; ‘is it because this draught is cold?’
Eventually Chiltern consoled himself with the belief that it was not a choice between the conflicting wisdom of Squadron Leader Chiltern and Pilot Officer Farlow but between the sun itself and his compass. He believed the sun.
‘Put the sun on your port bow and keep it there,’ Vincent shouted into the gale.
‘Bearing three-one-five relative,’ Chiltern shouted back. It was exactly the same thing but Chiltern hoped it seemed that he had had the last word.
The altimeter had caught Vincent’s eye—it showed 1,100 feet. They could never reach home. With luck they could make the Allied lines …
Vincent returned to his desk to plot a course for Juvincourt, though God alone knew how they could steer it without an astro compass. They had learnt to use these complicated but excellent gadgets during training but were not even issued with them on ops.
While he worked he found himself cursing Chiltern’s stubborn stupidity. Then his thoughts changed. He realised that they had Chiltern’s stubbornness to thank that they were not all prisoners of war by now. When Chiltern had ordered them back to fight the fire Vincent thought the decision was wrong and would almost certainly cost their lives. But Chiltern had kept N-Nuts in the air even though she was flying like a Heath Robinson kitchen sink. Chiltern had also done his best to spoil everything by circling the German guns.
‘But I guess he has other things on his mind.’
Chiltern had. Plenty. Chiltern was an excellent pilot. He himself knew this and his fellow officers knew it. But now he intended to prove it more effectively than ever before. This was an excellent opportunity to get something practical written into his records that would assist his entire future. Not twenty men in the whole of Bomber Command could have kept N-Nuts aloft. Chiltern knew it and now he determined to prove it.
The port outer had seized the instant they were hit and the port inner, in fine pitch, had slipped wide open and stuck there. That meant one propellor would remain not only still but dragging, while the other would race at maximum revs until the engine cracked under the strain, yet still it would not give full power because, in fine pitch, it lacked coarse air to grip.
Also in that instant, the port fin (the Lancaster has two ‘rudders’) was blown off its upper hinge and much of its control surface shredded. N-Nuts fell into a dive and, with only half control of one fin and its stickiness tightening his rudder bar, Chiltern had succeeded wonderfully in keeping her from falling into a fatal spin.
Within a minute the port inner was overheating so seriously that Chiltern knew its cooling system was broken. He could not throttle back; he could not feather. He had held N-Nuts poised for the moment the port inner would seize, its overheated pistons first melting and then welding into one block of metal. When that instant came it could not catch him unready.
N-Nuts shuddered and slewed around. By the time Chiltern had forced the grating rudder bar to correct that, N-Nuts was waffling mushily near to stalling speed. More throttle on the starboard engines swung N-Nuts to port, adding to the drag of the dead port engines and dragging fin. Even with full starboard trim, N-Nuts still swung to port and Chiltern had to hold right rudder to keep on course.
It was then that he sent Magnetic back to help fight the fire. Many a pilot and engineer could not have met this concentration of hazards; Chiltern felt confident he could handle it alone. He had not failed to notice a worrying rise in cylinder-head temperature on the starboard outer gauges but Magnetic’s presence could not remedy that …
Then that fool navigator in gauntlets came up and started asking him if he had noticed what the sun was doing! Chiltern wished he had let them bale out—all of them—and flown N-Nuts home alone. ‘That would be something for the record.’
By the time Vincent had computed a course for Juvincourt and converted it to a relative sun-bearing the time was 1606—they had been hit twelve minutes ago. He wrote the course on a slip of paper and handed it to Chiltern, at the same time offering him a piece of chocolate. Vincent had noticed that his skipper’s mouth was dry.
‘This will help,’ Vincent shouted.
Chiltern merely looked from chocolate to navigator, grim martyrdom in his expression, and shook his head. To himself, Vincent said, ‘Oh, damn the man! I simply won’t try to be friendly,’ and ate the chocolate himself.
‘Can you get any more bombs off?’, Chiltern yelled. He was growing quickly less sure of N-Nuts’ ability to reach safety. When the cookie had gone N-Nuts actually climbed a little. Since then she had mushed lower and lower and the controls grew more soggy every minute. Chiltern knew that the pneumatics and hydraulics were gone, that his controls were being further impeded as the still-burning tail sagged on to them, that he was losing lift and losing power and suddenly he feared his superiors might never see N-Nuts and the wonderful job he was doing.
Vincent had just replied, ‘I’ll see,’ when N-Nuts lurched wildly port, dropped a wingtip and stalled. The port fin had torn in half. Chiltern yelled, ‘Crash positions!’ and started a new struggle with his haywire controls. N-Nuts was diving and curling around port and trying to flick on to her back. Chiltern actually crossed his hands around the column to grind the ailerons full force against the spin and still she only just flew straight.
Chiltern’s expert eye had selected a field for their forced landing. Surrounded by forest, it was big enough if they hit slowly with their wheels up.
As Magnetic came forward to his crash position beside his skipper, he leant a hand on Vincent’s desk. The hand was bleeding and one drop of blood splashed across Vincent’s chart.
‘Careful, you untidy oaf!,’ yelled Vincent, and Magnetic noticed that Vincent was really upset.
‘We are about to crash,’ Magnetic thought, ‘God knows where or how successfully or if the nine thousand-pounders on board will explode, and our meticulous navigator is upset about a smudge on his precious plot.’
Though many navigators turned in charts that looked as though they had been used to carry fish and chips to a football match in the rain, Vincent’s charts were kept map-room fresh and his fastidiousness would not even die hard.
The emergency CO2 bottle had pushed on flap and N-Nuts swuffled unsteadily down towards the clearing. The changed flying attitude caused the fluttering fin to lock hard port and the nose fell with the drop in speed. Chiltern switched both his heels behind the starboard rudder, braced his wrists behind the right-locked column and pulled his hardest.
It was not quite enough. N-Nuts’ tail wheel caught in a sapling at the edge of the clearing and the whole weakened tail unit, together with many feet of fuselage, ripped off.
Facing backwards in the crash positions the crew saw Smiff’s body dangle from the broken turret that now released it and then go tumbling along behind them, mixed up with three thousand-pounders which had also shaken loose and were rolling erratically along the turf.
N-Nuts fluttered on, tipping on her nose. Ten feet higher and she may have crashed headlong. Instead, she struck the ground with her forward belly.
There was a noise like a thousand snares dragging slowly across a mammoth drum, then N-Nuts stopped.
Magnetic, who was standing when she hit, had twisted his ankle.
PART THREE
THE JACKAL
— 1
—
Fire follows a crash all too often. N-Nuts was already on fire before she crashed so the risk was great. Her burning tail, however, was torn off by the sapling and when she settled she showed no signs of bursting into flames.
Feeling sure that they were behind the lines, Squadron Leader Chiltern therefore ordered Magnetic to set her alight. Her equipment might interest the Germans if they found her.
Some say it is because aeroplanes can be as perverse as women that aviators call an aircraft ‘she’; certainly N-Nuts was as perverse in death as any Marie Antoinette could be. Twice Magnetic set N-Nuts alight; twice she went out again. Ten minutes before, her very metal had been aflame and all their efforts could not extinguish it. Now, with tinder lit around her petrol-sodden engines and coaxed with every warmth, she shook her head and crossed her legs and froze the fires out. It was not until Magnetic slashed a fuel lead, tied it to an opened parachute and then lit the petrol-soaked silk that N-Nuts melted.
By then Chiltern had hurried the others away. Shocked at the sight of N-Nuts after they crashed, despite the damage crashing had caused, he could see how weak she must have been while he was still flying her, and why lesser men, or less foolhardy men, might have baled out. Commendably cool despite the shudder it caused him, he ordered the crew to separate.
‘We have little chance of escape as a group,’ he said. ‘And each of you remember that to escape is your duty. Singly, at least some of us should get through to the Allied lines.’
Yarpi quaked at the prospect of attempting escape alone; shivering and muttering, obviously his nerve had gone. ‘You come with me,’ Chiltern said bravely. ‘The rest of you get cracking.’
Vincent waited an instant for Chiltern to wish them luck. But the skipper had missed his cue, so Vincent said, ‘Good luck, sir.’
‘We need skill, Farlow, not luck,’ Chiltern answered.
Magnetic waited until N-Nuts was irretrievably afire, then followed them westward into the forest.