Bomber Boys - a Ghost Story

by Simon Leighton-Porter

  Disconsolate, I wandered back in. Gilroy looked up at me over the top of his newspaper. ‘Been out for a swift pint, Tommy?’ he asked.

  I ignored the bait. ‘No, just went out to stretch my legs. There’s a lovely sunset out there, you ought to take a look.’

  ‘Fuck the sunset. It’s seeing tomorrow’s sunrise that interests me,’ he snarled back.

  Once again the hands of the clock seemed to freeze as they inched desperately slowly towards the time for the general briefing. By twenty-five past five, seventeen crews, over a hundred men, were seated in rows behind trestle tables waiting, in a haze of blue cigarette and pipe smoke, for the curtains at the far end of the briefing room to be pulled away and the target revealed. Outside the doors, armed guards were posted. I wondered for a moment whether they were to keep intruders out or backsliders like me in. Harrison and the rest of the CO’s crew were in the front row and there was no way I could get to him.

  At exactly five thirty a voice from the back of the briefing room called us all to attention and over a hundred chairs scraped the highly polished floor as the Station Commander and his section leaders marched down the aisle between the rows of men. A tall man with a ruddy complexion and sporting the traditional ‘wizard prang’ RAF moustache, he strode up onto the low stage in front of the curtains and stood for a moment, regarding us intently, almost as though he knew there was an imposter in their midst. ‘Gentlemen, please be seated. You may smoke.’ He strode to the back of the stage and, with a theatrical flourish, pulled the draw-cord and the curtains parted. The route to the target and back was marked out in red ribbon, a series of straight lines and dog-legs reaching into the middle of Germany, beyond the Ruhr but at least 150 miles short of Berlin. A chorus of gasps, muttering, whistles and swearing went round the room. The Group Captain had heard worse before and continued, affecting not to notice. ‘Your target for tonight, gentlemen, is Brunswick, the city of Prince Henry the Lion. Your objective is simple, to destroy the city’s capacity to support the enemy’s war effort. It is a target that the squadron has visited before – the Commander-in-Chief himself wants it made clear to all units taking part that if you do your job properly tonight, you won’t have to go back. Hamburg no longer functions as a city, his orders are that you reduce Brunswick to a similar state. As you will hear shortly, it is an important manufacturing centre, a key hub of the Nazi railway system and also a garrison town for an SS Division. I will now hand you over to the station intelligence officer who will give you further details. Good luck, gentlemen, and God speed.’

  The same plump, shiny Flight Lieutenant whom I had met earlier now took the floor. He moved to the lectern at the side of the stage and peered at us over a pair of half-moon glasses. ‘Good evening, gentlemen. As the Station Commander has just told you, Brunswick, or Braunschweig to its inhabitants, is an important industrial centre. Population of 150,000, many of whom work in the armaments industry. On the aiming point map which you will see later, the town has a VW motor works that is a major producer of lorries for the German army. There is also a chemical works, railway repair and marshalling yards and an SS barrack complex. Just like Stettin and Konigsberg, the old town is comprised of closely packed wooden buildings which will burn well.

  ‘Previous attacks have been made on this target but with varying success. Our old enemy, ‘creepback’ is why you are having to return to the target tonight. I cannot stress strongly enough how important it is to find and bomb the target markers. We don’t want any ‘fringe merchants’ on this station.’

  Gilroy leant across and whispered to me. ‘Easy to say when you’re safe and sound, sat on your fat arse behind a desk.’

  The intelligence briefing continued – history of previous attacks, known flak positions, night fighter beacons, escape and evasion, conduct in the event of capture. With the exception of the sprog pilot’s crew who all took copious notes, the others ignored what was to them nothing more than a warm-up act. Cynicism came early in a tour and hardened with each trip a crew survived.

  Next at the dais was the navigation leader, a boyish Flight Lieutenant who looked barely old enough to be allowed out after dark, let alone spend his nights over Germany. Solely by having survived 20 trips he was by default the senior navigator, four previous nav leaders having gone missing in as many weeks. He ran through an edited version of the navs’ and captains’ brief that he had delivered earlier. With the aid of a billiard cue he traced the route into the target. From the Lincolnshire coast the line continued towards Denmark before turning onto a southerly heading, passing between the two known hot-spots of Bremen and Hamburg on a heading that the planners clearly hoped would fool the German air defence commanders into thinking that Berlin was the target. Next it skirted round Munster and Fassberg before turning almost due south for the final run. The route home was more direct: a north-westerly leg to avoid the Ruhr, with a couple of dog-legs to avoid fighter beacons and known flak concentrations and then a straight line to a landfall at Southwold in Suffolk.

  Heights, heading, turning points and timings accurate to the second were all fine in theory, but the crews knew that however good the plan, it would soon crumble in the face of reality. The other unspoken truth was that many crews deserted their assigned heights at the first hint of night fighter activity in order to seek sanctuary at higher altitude.

  I saw Prentice, our navigator, lean towards Brownlow and heard him say in a stage whisper, ‘I think Butch Harris is playing join the dots with flak concentrations tonight.’

  The bombing leader then took his turn to brief us. The use of ‘window’ to blind the enemy’s radar was to start well before the enemy coast, an announcement that caused groans among the bomb aimers. It was their duty to throw the bundles of aluminised paper strips out of the flare chute at preset intervals – a tedious and much hated task. However, the grumbling stopped as the briefing moved on to the focus of tonight’s mission. ‘Gentlemen,’ he said in a strong New Zealand accent, ‘your aiming point is the island in the centre of the Altstadt on which St Blasius’ Cathedral sits.’ He walked over to an easel and pulled away the blanket covering it to reveal what looked like a piece of abstract art. ‘If cloud cover prevents accurate visual marking, this is an estimation of what the H2S picture of the target will look like on your radar screens when approached on a southerly heading. Bombing height is 18,000 feet, stick spacing 30 yards with a load comprising one 4,000 high capacity, and a mix of 250 and 500 lb GP bombs – fusing nose instantaneous – plus incendiaries.’ Unwin, seated next to me wrote this all down in a childish round hand, his tongue following each loop of the pencil.

  The engineer leader gave his briefing next. Fuel loads, boost and mixture settings were all covered before he handed over to the signals leader who spoke about frequencies, broadcast winds and use of ‘Fishpond’, an additional screen of the H2S radar system which the wireless operator could use to detect enemy aircraft approaching from astern. What I knew and they didn’t is that post-war analysis had shown that the Germans were capable of homing onto H2S transmissions.

  Last of all came my specialisation – specialisation, now there was an irony – air gunnery. Even as a first-timer it was obvious to me that wasn’t a lot the gunnery leader could say that he hadn’t said during his previous briefings. Recently promoted into dead men’s flying boots, he stood five feet tall at the most and spoke in a strong Cockney accent which at times I found hard to follow. ‘Stay alert, and if you feel you’re dozing off, take your ‘wakey-wakey’ pills. Don’t assume everything twin engined is hostile – there are Mossies out there supporting us tonight, so if in doubt call a corkscrew, don’t just blaze away at everything you see.’

  The final act in this little drama was led by the met officer. He covered times of moonrise, moonset and sunrise – this last announcement was greeted by a cheer. He repeated the wind velocities along the route that he had given at the earlier briefing. All knew that these were estimates at best and that crews relying on forecast
winds alone to navigate could well end up tens of miles off track by the time they reached the target area. For those lucky enough to make it back to Leckonby the following morning, light mist was forecast. Lastly, and almost as an afterthought, he mentioned the possibility of light to moderate icing during the climb and on the leg down towards the Belgian coast.

  When the met forecaster had sat down, the squadron commander, Wg Cdr Preston, a man with the build and swagger of a rugby forward, walked purposefully into the centre of the stage, scanning the upturned faces, looking for what? I wondered. Fear? Yes, that was there in abundance but no one dared show it in front of their comrades. Disbelief in the cause? Very probably, but that depended on which cause Preston held most dearly. From what I had heard of the man, it was a DFC and better still a DSO to go with it, followed by rapid promotion. A pre-war regular, he had spent the first four years of hostilities at flying training establishments – this was his first operational tour. His narrow-set eyes flickered along our row, missed me out and settled somewhere in the vicinity of Brownlow, our pilot. Then, looking up towards the metal rafters of the briefing room as though searching for divine inspiration he started his briefing in a high, reedy voice that, to me anyway, completely detracted from the image he was trying to present. It was little more than a series of platitudes – a head prefect encouraging the first XV before the big match against a rival school – stay in the stream, stick to your briefed heights, keep out of the flak belts, no weaving and no shortcutting off target – the last two orders were greeted with an undercurrent of muttering and from just behind me I heard the word ‘bollocks’. Preston must have heard too but chose to ignore it. As the homily came to its conclusion I permitted myself a look back over my shoulder to see rows of upturned faces, all looking in the same direction. Then it hit me. This, or a scene just like it, was exactly as described by the security guard I had met in the pub. How could he have known?

  The room was called to attention and the station commander, the squadron CO and briefing officers left. A babble of voices broke out as crews clustered together to discuss what they had just heard. I tried to find Harrison in the scrum of bodies but he was nowhere to be seen. The rest of his crew, including Preston, were there but the one man who I hoped could save me from this madness had gone.

  After the briefing, the melee coalesced into seven-man clumps and I joined the other NCOs in our crew for the short walk to the sergeants’ mess for the traditional pre-flight meal of bacon and eggs. Someone made a joke about ‘fattening us up for the kill.’ It wasn’t very funny and, in the circumstances almost certainly not original, but it provoked a gale of forced laughter from the crews sharing our table.

  Then it was merely a question of killing time. The condemned men had eaten a hearty meal and now all that remained was for fate to decide who lived and who died. Some went back to their huts and read or wrote last letters, others drifted down to the flight office and carried on reading, but eventually, after a wait that seemed to last forever, Brownlow called his crew together and we went through to the flying clothing section to get ready. By the time I had clambered into the seemingly endless layers of insulation both under and over the electrically-heated suit that both gunners in a Lancaster always wore, I was sweating and red-faced. Unfamiliar catches and fastenings left my fingers and thumbs raw and bleeding.

  At last fully kitted, we collected flight rations and escape kits, life jackets, parachute harnesses and packs. As the seven of us shuffled out to the waiting truck, it seemed to me that we embodied the start of Wilfred Owen’s poem Dulce et Decorum est, ‘Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, knock-kneed, coughing like hags…’ In an unconscious act of life imitating art, Gilroy lit a cigarette and at the first puff, proceeded to hack and splutter as though his last moment had come.

  It was fully dark now and in the blackout all I could see was the outline of each waiting Lancaster we passed and the red firefly dots of the groundcrews’ cigarettes. With a jolt, the truck came to a halt and the other crew sharing it with us climbed down. We exchanged shouts of good luck and they disappeared into the darkness. In the cold night air, the sweat had condensed and I could feel it running down my back. If that freezes while we’re airborne I thought, it’s going to be a long, uncomfortable trip.

  All the crew, except the pilot who had gone to the dispersal hut to sign the Form 700, gathered around the rear door chatting about nothing in particular while we waited for him to come back. I found myself worrying that I wouldn’t be able to squeeze into the cramped turret with all this extra clothing padding me out to twice my normal girth. More worrying still was the prospect that I seemed to be trapped in a world that wasn’t mine and with no immediate hope of escape. Brownlow, our skipper returned. Why in God’s name I considered him ‘our’ skipper was beyond me. It was as though I was slowly coming to accept my fate. No, I told myself, you mustn’t give in, this isn’t real, you are not going to bomb Brunswick tonight, you’re going to get into your nice, warm, twenty-first century car and drive back to Lincoln. This isn’t real, it can’t be.

  ‘Right-ho, chaps. All aboard.’ Without seeing his face, the tone of forced nonchalance in Brownlow’s voice was enough to tell me just how frightened he was. He turned away, heaved his seat-pack parachute onto his shoulder and led the way up the aluminium ladder. The irony of turning left at the aircraft door was not lost on me – no business class on this trip and it might not even be a return, I thought with a shudder.

  My fears about getting into the turret were realised. Swaddled in what felt like a cross between a straight-jacket and a fat suit I could neither bend nor turn properly. First I sat on my lap belt and couldn’t free it. Next I couldn’t find the lead to plug in my electrically-heated undersuit.

  Then came a sight familiar to me from my earlier visits to Leckonby: a single green Very flare arced into the night sky, bathing the dispersal and the trees behind it in its unearthly glare. I watched it bounce once and then splutter out. So enthralled was I with this spectacle that I dropped one of my gloves, and by the time I finally got plugged in to the intercom, two of the engines were already running. I paused long enough to get my breath and checked in. ‘Rear gunner on.’

  ‘Nice of you to show up, Tommy. Thought you’d nipped off for a pint,’ said Brownlow.

  The others all laughed and Unwin’s voice came over the intercom from his mid-upper turret, ‘Nah, lazy sod was asleep already. Past his bedtime.’ More proof, not that I needed it, that my alter-ego was not well regarded by the rest of the crew. If only they knew the half of it, I thought.

  All four engines were running now and I felt the turret twitch slightly as the hydraulic pressure rose. I swung it left and right and, following Unwin’s lead, confirmed that all was serviceable. We then waited while Brownlow, assisted by Greaves, the flight engineer, sitting just to his right, carried out the post-start checks. The engine note rose and fell as they exercised the propeller constant speed controls, then another almost imperceptible drop in RPM as each of the two magnetos on the four engines were checked in turn, and then it was time to go. Inching forward, a quick dab of the brakes to check they were working and we turned onto the taxiway, waved on by our groundcrew who were standing outside the hut, the clouds of condensation from their breath lit by a glimmer of yellow brightness showing through the half open door. Just behind us, uncomfortably close it seemed to me, I could see another Lancaster following. Soon, all along the taxiway I could see a string of red and green lights marking the wingtips of the aircraft behind us. Had it not been so bizarre, the spectacle of the amber outer taxiway lights and the blue inners framing this procession of lumbering black giants, could have almost been described as beautiful. However, all I could think of was the prospect of what might happen to us if Brownlow mishandled the takeoff. With a full bomb load and nearly two thousand gallons of volatile fuel on board, the best we could hope for was a quick end.

  As the queue of departing aircraft inched forward and we neared the
runway threshold I saw a large crowd of well-wishers, all come to see us off. As the landing light from the aircraft ahead of us swept across the group I recognised the Station Commander waving and giving the thumbs up to each crew in turn. Slightly behind him and out of his line of sight, a young WAAF was waving what looked like a pair of bloomers.

  Finally, our turn came. The earlier crosswind that caused Brownlow almost to leave the runway during our daytime takeoff had dropped, and the windsock hung limp and damp, wrapped around its pole. Still conditions, though, were potentially even more dangerous – with no headwind to help the wings generate lift, the takeoff run would be long, leaving us with no safety margin in the event of an engine failure. I could tell Brownlow was nervous too. As he started the turn onto the runway he grabbed at the brakes and instead of being a smooth curve, our turn onto the runway centreline was a series of lurches and heaves.

  So this was it. Somehow I had assumed, deep down, that this madness would end, leaving me to return to my car a wiser and chastened man. Instead I felt the skipper release the brakes and heard the engines’ roar increase to a deafening bellow as Z-Zebra accelerated agonisingly slowly down the runway. I managed a desultory wave to the crowd and closed my eyes, convinced we were never going to get airborne in the 4,000 feet of concrete available to us. Finally, after what seemed like hours, the tail of the aircraft rose. I risked a look back but distance was difficult to estimate because all I could see of the runway from my turret was two tapering rows of white lights converging to a point that looked a horribly long way off. Just when I had convinced myself we were going to die in a blazing fireball, Brownlow snatched the Lancaster off the ground and into a shallow climb. Almost instantaneously the white lights stopped and I saw the red end of runway lights flash past only a few tens of feet below me.