Bomber Boys - a Ghost Story

by Simon Leighton-Porter

  I carried out the emergency drills myself and then took stock. We were in dense cloud at 5,000 feet heading roughly south. The co-pilot was beyond saving but I didn’t know how many passengers and crew were injured, nor did I know how long the port wing would last, so we needed to get back on the ground quickly. I keyed the transmit switch to make the mayday call. Silence. No side tone, nothing. The damage to the aircraft had clearly taken out the radios. The primary flight instruments and all the navigation displays had failed, so I was reduced to using the standby artificial horizon, airspeed indicator, altimeter and compass. To have a chance of getting us all back on the ground in one piece I desperately needed to know where we were – one of the oldest and wisest sayings in flying is that in an emergency you need to do only three things: ‘Aviate, Navigate and Communicate.’ In other words; first, fly the aircraft, secondly, don’t get lost or fly into high ground, and, finally, tell someone who can help you that you’ve got a problem. To navigate and to have a hope of communicating, I needed to get the stricken aircraft’s electrical systems back on line. The starboard engine was still working, so in theory it should be providing power to its generator. That was the theory. Try as I might, the aircraft remained electrically dead. All I had was battery power, and with no heating to the aircraft’s speed and altitude sensing systems they would soon ice up. Then we would die.

  Lincolnshire is pretty flat and mostly rural so I reasoned that as long as I stayed away from the Wolds and the Belmont transmitter mast, I could risk a gentle descent even if it meant landing wheels up in a field. I tried not to think about electricity pylons, hoped our luck would hold, and with sweating, clammy hands, turned onto a northerly heading, lowered the nose and reduced power on the good engine. The die was cast.

  With no radio I had no further need for the captain’s blood-soaked headset and was about to take it off when to my amazement I heard a voice. Weak at first, crackly with static but distinct and familiar. ‘Battery level critical, skipper, bad fuel imbalance… all the transfer pumps are out.’ Boyle. I turned to my right. In place of the co-pilot was a figure clad in a fur-lined Irvin flying jacket, his head covered by a leather flying helmet and his features, save for his eyes, hidden by an oxygen mask. This was a hallucination. It had to be. I knew that stress can bring them on so that had to be it. Of all the bloody times for this to happen. Sod it, I thought. If I ignored him, Boyle would go away.

  Then another voice. Hudson’s. ‘Descending through 3,000 feet, skipper. Estimate we’re somewhere between Sleaford and Boston. Can’t be more precise without a fix.’ Again, my first reflex was to ignore him but what the voice had said seemed about right given that we’d been on a southerly heading since the prop came off and were now heading roughly north.

  The cold in the cockpit was getting to me now. The sweat of fear had condensed and icy rivulets ran down my back. Trying hard to concentrate, I timed our rate of descent – 300 feet per minute. Gentle enough for me to cobble together a landing if we came out of cloud. We were descending through 1,500 feet when I saw it – just below us, a green light and then slightly offset to the left, a white one. Seconds later I saw a red light. We had almost collided with another aircraft and I swung the yoke hard over to the right. Only fifty yards separated us but all I could make out was the three lights, the darker mass of a fuselage and the starboard wing, tipped by its green navigation light. Like us, the aircraft was descending, presumably to land. All I had to do was follow and we would arrive at an airfield where I could force land on the grass next to the runway. It wouldn’t be a comfortable landing, but it would be survivable. We were going to make it.

  Then disaster. A patch of thicker cloud and for agonising seconds I lost sight of the stranger. All my previous training screamed at me to break away but instead I increased the power, edging towards him, tensing against the mid-air collision that I so feared would come if I misjudged our closing speed. There it was. A flicker of green. Gone. No, got it again. Thank Christ for that. A last glance in at the artificial horizon, heading, height and speed, before transferring my attention to formating on my unknown rescuer. Night formation flying is difficult at the best of times – my lack of practice started to tell and at first I overcontrolled in my attempts to hold a stable position in an aircraft that was doing its best to fly sideways. I chanced another glance inside at the instruments – a 600 feet per minute rate of descent. Spot on for a 3-degree glidepath at this speed. He was definitely on his final approach to land. I fumbled for the undercarriage handle and activated the emergency gravity release. Three satisfying thumps as the gear locked down were confirmed by three green bulbs glowing at me from the instrument panel. With damage to the trailing edge of the left wing I didn’t dare lower the flaps for fear of generating an uncontrollable roll to port if the left hand flap was damaged or didn’t deploy.

  Then, as the cloud began to thin, I got a better look at him – four engines, black fuselage, twin tail fins, one at the end of each horizontal stabiliser… a bloody Lancaster, battle letters CD-O… this wasn’t possible. No time to think, lights coming in to view. A tapering funnel of white, evenly-spaced, wonderful lights. Height 300 feet. A runway. Thank Christ for that. Then realisation as we broke fully clear of cloud. No sign of the Lanc. Not a runway but instead, a long straight road. Houses. Streetlights. Full power. Got to go around. Mustn’t hit the houses. I raised the nose. Control yoke hard over to counter the roll. Full right rudder… but no good. Not enough control authority at this speed.

  The port wingtip hit the ground first. I was aware of the aircraft cartwheeling and then the searing brightness and heat of a terrible explosion.

  Then nothing.

  The national media covered the accident at Leckonby. Here is the report that appeared on the front page of The Times, the following day, the 30th of March.

  Forty-nine passengers and crew are feared dead after an Anglia Airways flight from Humberside airport to Weeze in Germany crashed onto a housing estate near the village of Leckonby in Lincolnshire last night. Wreckage was strewn along the newly-built Lancaster Way where fourteen homes and over twenty cars are reported to have been damaged. The emergency services have confirmed that four people on the ground have been treated for shock and minor injuries at local hospitals.

  The Civil Aviation Authority have opened an enquiry into the accident which unofficial sources are blaming on the disintegration of a propeller shortly after takeoff. Wreckage, believed to be from the left engine of the stricken turboprop airliner, has been found in a field near the village of Habrough to the north east of Humberside airport. Cont’d page 3…

  The Lincoln Post also covered the story. On its inside pages in the personal column, it carried a brief obituary of Miss Elizabeth Clark, former wartime WAAF officer, who “passed away in her sleep” at Hobbs End Hall Retirement Home, Leckonby on the night of 29th March, aged 98.

  ***

  So now you know everything. I had hoped to find rest, but even that is denied me. Sometimes I am visible to the living, at other times not – it is something beyond my control. My ability to interact with the physical world is failing and even the effort of pushing a pencil across the pages of a notebook to record these last few words has taken every ounce of strength still remaining to me.

  I ask not for pity, merely that you understand the human frailty that led me, like a moth to a flame, to meddle in things that ultimately destroyed me. I am now condemned to wander this shadow world – for how long, I have no idea – where even the quiet eternity of the grave is denied me.

  THE END

 

 

 
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