Operation Diver

by Robert Jackson

  Hardy and a couple of the other navigators put their heads together and made some rapid calculations, coming up after a while with the information that the bombs would have to be released at 220 yards from the tunnel mouth to follow their new trajectory. Terry Saint, who had meanwhile been studying the target photographs — each of which was marked with a scale — also made an interesting observation: on the approach to each of the three tunnels, the Germans had obligingly sited an anti-aircraft battery at a distance of about two hundred yards from the mouth. It would make an excellent aiming-point.

  They tried it that afternoon, the Mosquitos arrowing down towards the railway cutting and releasing their bombs to arc across the gap a fraction of a second after pulling out. Then they were away over the hill, the snarl of their engines rattling the roofs and windows of the village beyond.

  This time, they had an eighty per cent success rate. And when they returned the following day the score was even higher, despite the fact that on this occasion the target was partly obscured by smoke drifting from canisters placed near the dummy gun positions in order to simulate what conditions might be like on the real day.

  Then the Mosquitos were gone for good, leaving the village to slumber once more, and soon the soldiers had gone too. The only signs left of their presence were a spattering of scars on the hillside and in the cave; mounds of tumbled earth and rock, dislodged by the hurtling projectiles, some of which had buried themselves deep in the soil. None of the villagers would ever know why the tumult had suddenly descended on their lives.

  *

  The next day the Mosquitos flew down to Tangmere. Yeoman had sent a signal to Group HQ, stating that the Squadron was ready to undertake the forthcoming operation, and the attack plan had been finalized. The profusion of flak around the objective was a source of worry, and much thought had been given to reducing the danger from it. In the end, it had been decided that each of the three tunnels should be attacked by a section of four Mosquitos to begin with; two of these would dive at the target, as planned, while the other two would stay at low level and shoot up the flak positions on the embankments. These two would then climb away to carry out their own attack on the tunnel, while the original pair would take over the job of flak suppression.

  At the same time, a fourth section of four Mosquitos would attack the flak posts on the hill itself with cannon fire before making their bombing runs. Basically, the whole scheme ensured that one pair of Mosquitos would always be available to give covering fire to another. A lot depended on accurate timing, but Yeoman and his pilots were confident that they could pull it off.

  If they couldn’t do it, they felt, then nobody could.

  At Tangmere, the personnel of 380 Squadron, from the CO down to the lowliest airman, had strict instructions to keep themselves to themselves until the operation took place. In the officers’ mess, the pilots of the two Spitfire Wings stationed at Tangmere regarded the newcomers with considerable interest, but their attempts at conversation about anything other than trivial matters met with a blank wall of silence and in the end they gave up.

  The operation, code-named ‘Big Stick’, had originally been scheduled to take place in the afternoon of 17 April, but bad weather conditions over the Continent caused it to be postponed for two days. The crews took the opportunity to refresh their memories, for the hundredth time, on the most minute details of the target and the surrounding terrain, poring over maps, target photographs and models, the latter painstakingly built by Flight Lieutenant Freddie Barnes, the Squadron Intelligence Officer, and his small staff. The material was kept in a room under constant guard in the operations block.

  At last, in the early hours of 19 April, the weather began to clear and the forecast for the rest of the day was optimistic. At 0600, the main briefing-room was packed with the crews of 380 Squadron and the Spitfire pilots of the Tangmere Wings, who would be covering the Mosquitos during the operation.

  After a short address by Tangmere’s CO, it was Yeoman who opened the proceedings. Standing on the dais, overlooking the rows of seated men, he began —

  ‘Gentlemen, I know that for the past couple of days there has been a lot of speculation about the presence here of a Mosquito squadron, and that some of you have perhaps resented our silence. The reason for it is quite simply this.

  ‘At 0800, that is in a little under two hours’ time, 380 Squadron will carry out a low-level attack against a series of tunnels at St Leu, near the River Oise. These tunnels are being used by the enemy as underground storage depots for a new and devastating type of weapon…’

  The audience listened, enthralled and alarmed, as Yeoman told them the details of the operation. There was much he was not authorized to tell — the specific details of the weapon they were dealing with, for example — but most of the Spitfire pilots now guessed that it was connected in some way with the No-Ball sites which had been under attack for the last three weeks.

  After Yeoman had finished, the senior Wing Commander at Tangmere took over the stand, explaining the part to be played by the Spitfires. The three squadrons of 126 Wing would go in fifteen minutes ahead of the Mosquitos and patrol a line between Amiens and Lille in the hope of drawing off enemy fighters, while the squadrons of 127 Wing were to cover the Mosquitos on the way home.

  The briefing went on for another half-hour, with various specialist officers adding their own comments. The final act was to synchronize watches, and then the briefing broke up, the aircrew heading for their respective dispersals, where pockets were meticulously emptied of anything which, if anyone was shot down, might give away vital information to the enemy.

  In 380 Squadron’s dispersal there was little talking; just the odd curt comment, and sometimes a muffled curse as the pilots and navigators struggled into their flying clothing and Mae West lifejackets.

  Yeoman looked at his watch: take-off was in twenty minutes. Once again, his mind went over the attack plan.

  He would be leading Red Section, which would be attacking the first of the tunnels — ‘Tunnel Able’, as it had been designated. His pilots were Terry Saint, Sergeant Carr and a newcomer to the squadron, Pilot Officer Grinton. ‘Tunnel Baker’ would be attacked by Yellow Section, consisting of Yves Romilly, Warrant Officer Laurie, Pilot Officer Crombie and Flight Sergeant Martinsen, the latter a Norwegian. Blue Section, led by Rory McManners, with Flight Sergeant Lorrimer, Pilot Officer Wallace and Sergeant Simons would hit ‘Tunnel Charlie’.

  That left Green Section, under Tim Sloane. He and his pilots — Sergeant Hudson and two more newcomers, Flying Officer Atkins and Flight Sergeant Parker — had the unenviable task of suppressing the flak batteries on the hill before making their own attack after everyone else. It would be up to Sloane — or his deputy, if he was hit — to direct their bombs against whichever of the tunnels appeared to be the least damaged.

  It was time to go. Already, the thirty-six Spitfires of 126 Wing were taxi-ing out for take-off. The morning was clear, with a few high mare’s tails streaking the sky.

  By 0700 all the Mosquitos’ engines were turning. A white rocket arced into the sky from the control tower and the sixteen aircraft began to move, section by section, towards the end of the runway.

  Yeoman glanced round to ensure that all was well. Terry Saint was in position, to starboard and some distance behind. The other two aircraft of Red Section were astern, keeping well clear to avoid any loose stones that might be whirled up from the runway.

  ‘All set, Happy?’

  ‘All set, skip. Course after take-off is one-two-two, magnetic.’

  ‘Roger.’

  The Mosquito began to roll forward, Yeoman eased open the port throttle a little ahead of the other to check the aircraft’s slight tendency to swing to port. A light forward pressure on the control column brought the tail up as the Mosquito gathered speed. She bounced once, twice, on the main undercarriage and then she was airborne. Yeoman waited until he had a comfortable margin of height, then braked the wheels — a nece
ssary precaution, for if they were still rotating they would cause severe vibration as they came up into the wells — and raised the undercarriage and flaps.

  He turned gently to port, keeping Tangmere in sight, staying low and throttling back a little to enable the others to catch up, carrying out a wide circuit of the airfield. The other Mosquitos came up in pairs and slotted quickly into position. Then, in four tight boxes of four, the whole formation turned on to 122 degrees, drumming out over the coast between the peacetime seaside resorts of Bognor Regis and Littlehampton.

  The coast of France lay eighty-five miles ahead of them. Yeoman was aware that their course would take them dangerously close to the anti-aircraft defences around le Tréport, but it could not be helped; a few miles further north they risked running into the Focke-Wulfs from Abbéville, while to the south lay Dieppe — where, since the disastrous landings by the 1st Canadian Division and British Commandos in August 1942 the Germans had stiffened their defences for miles along the coast.

  The Mosquitos flew on at a hundred feet. There was no need for Hardy to give the customary warning ‘enemy coast ahead’; a few minutes later they could all see it, a hazy blue line rising above the eastern horizon.

  A few small boats, fishing-smacks perhaps, blurred past their wing-tips. The Somme Estuary lay over to the left, le Tréport to the right. The eyes of the navigators stared at the terrain ahead, constantly checking that they were on course; those of the pilots roved across the sky, searching ahead, above and to either side.

  Both the Mosquitos and the Tangmere Spitfires were using the same radio frequency. So far, the R/T had been silent, but now a crackle of voices, some calm, some excited, burst across it.

  ‘Fantail leader, bandits seven o’clock, level.’

  ‘Roger, keep turning…’

  ‘Here they come!’

  ‘Fantail Yellow Two, break!’

  ‘Red Three, I’ve had it, baling out.’

  Yeoman turned down the volume control until the confused babble of voices was no more than a dull murmur in his headphones. Away to the north, high and invisible, the Spitfires of 126 Wing were engaging the enemy.

  ‘Amiens to port, skipper. Thirty-five miles to target.’

  ‘Roger.’ Yeoman glanced over to the left; the town was a blue-grey smudge on the horizon. All the Mosquitos were still in position, as though held together by invisible threads. From time to time, as they sped on, smoky tracer lanced at them from some unseen gun position, but it was mostly light stuff of machine-gun calibre and their speed quickly took them out of danger.

  Soon afterwards, with Montdidier passing close to port, Hardy said quietly:

  ‘Target dead ahead, skipper. Straight down the valley.’

  In front of them, less than ten miles away, the ground fell away in a shallow incline towards the valley of the Oise. To the north-west of the river, clearly visible, a hummock of high ground rose in isolation.

  Every detail of that hill was implanted on the minds of Yeoman and his fellow pilots. Jutting out from its southwestern edge, like shortened fingers, were three spurs — and in the folds of those spurs lay their targets, the tunnels. Some miles beyond the hill, astride the river and the main railway line, lay the towns of Ribecourt and Noyon.

  ‘There are the spur lines,’ Hardy said, pointing through the windscreen.

  ‘Okay, I see ’em.’ Yeoman pressed the R/T transmit button.

  ‘All Big Stick aircraft, execute attack. Acknowledge.’

  One by one, the leaders of the other three sections reported that they had received his order. The formation broke up as each section headed for its respective target.

  Terry Saint dropped back until he was half a mile astern of Yeoman’s Mosquito, and both climbed to two thousand feet. The other two Mosquitos of Red Section, flown by Carr and Grinton, stayed low, turning along the line of the spur railroad that led to Tunnel Able.

  The flak started to come up, spattering the sky ahead with puffs of smoke. Yeoman looked down: Carr and Grinton had already begun their attack, their Mosquitos racing along the embankments, trailing thin lines of grey smoke as they hammered the flak positions with their cannon.

  ‘All right, Terry, let’s go!’

  Yeoman pushed the Mosquito’s nose down, aiming for the second 20-mm gun emplacement on the approach to the tunnel mouth, the one that would give him the required range of two hundred yards. The Mosquito buffeted slightly, but it was nothing more than the turbulence created by the open bomb doors.

  Yeoman tried to close his ears to the shells that were bursting all around with a noise like the deep-throated bark of a dog. Streams of smoke whirled past the perspex of the cockpit canopy.

  Somewhere towards the tail of the aircraft there were three distinct thuds, transmitted to him by the vibration of the control column. There was no time to worry about it now. He had eyes only for the gun that was his aiming point, and for the air-speed indicator that would give him the correct speed for bomb release.

  The flak gun’s four barrels were turned towards him. He could clearly see the flashes from their muzzles. Then the gun disappeared in a cloud of dust and smoke as cannon shells erupted all around it. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Carr’s Mosquito streak over the gun emplacement and pull up in a steep climb.

  The ASI showed 300 mph. His thumb tensed on the bomb release button, mounted on the control column. In a single movement, he pulled the stick back and jabbed his thumb down.

  The Mosquito curved up into a climb, its underside almost brushing the railway line. The two 500-lb bombs fell from its belly, the speed and attitude of the aircraft inserting them into an upward trajectory. They described a beautiful parabola through the air, hit the ground just short of the tunnel mouth with two spurts of dust, and bounced inside.

  Yeoman’s Mosquito raced up the hillside and over the crest, weaving to escape the flak that reached out to pluck it down. Another Mosquito zipped across its nose, perilously close, its cannon hammering as it engaged one of the flak batteries on the ridge. It was one of Green Section’s aircraft, although which one Yeoman could not tell.

  Suddenly, a great lump of wing broke away from the Mosquito as it took a direct hit. The remainder went into a fast, uncontrollable roll, shedding fragments, and impacted on top of the battery it had been strafing. There was a blinding flash as its bombs exploded and a great plume of smoke and earth shot into the air.

  Sickened, Yeoman did a steep S-turn and took the Mosquito down over the crest of the hill again, flying in the opposite direction to give covering fire to the two Mosquitos which had been strafing the embankment. The latter, having broken away sharply at the end of their strafing runs, were now turning hard, dropping into line astern as they came angling in for their bombing attack.

  From the right-hand seat, Hardy glanced back as the tunnel mouth came into view. A huge cloud of evil-looking yellow smoke was billowing from it. Then the navigator winced as the Mosquito’s cannon opened up with their usual foot-jarring concussions.

  Yeoman fired in short, angry bursts, making as certain as he possibly could that each one was effective, conserving his ammunition. He saw his shells spatter across the armoured shield of an anti-aircraft gun, the explosive impact twisting the barrels like straws.

  The Mosquito lurched suddenly as a shell from the next flak gun in line along the embankment exploded over the port wing with a terrific crack. Yeoman corrected the swing quickly, fired at the gun and missed. Then he was flashing over the top taking the Mosquito up in a fast climb, weaving to escape the glowing trails of fire that chased him.

  Terry Saint’s Mosquito was also climbing, and Yeoman felt a surge of relief with the knowledge that the irrepressible New Zealander had come through. He called him up over the radio.

  ‘Big Stick Leader to Red Two. Shoot up anything you can see.’

  Saint acknowledged and swung round towards the crest of the hill again, firing at some unseen target. Yeoman continued to gain height, bringing the Mosqu
ito round in a wide turn, anxious to find out what was happening. The whole hill was shrouded in smoke; on the crest above Tunnel Able, the wreckage of an aircraft was blazing fiercely.

  He looked over towards the other tunnels. Mosquitos twisted and wove across the sky overhead, darting down from time to time to engage troublesome anti-aircraft guns. One of the aircraft flared suddenly with a vivid white flame and went down somewhere beyond the hill. Dark smoke spiralled up in the morning sunlight.

  Suddenly, the hill exploded. There was no warning. For three-quarters of a mile along its length, the hill crest gave a sudden heave, as though pushed from underneath by a huge hand. Fissures opened suddenly and spurts of smoke shot through them. Then the hill collapsed on itself, leaving a pall of dust and smoke hanging motionless in the air.

  Although he did not know it, Yeoman was witnessing the subterranean explosion of a hundred one-ton warheads, touched off by the Mosquitos’ bombs. The warheads had not been stockpiled together, but flame and blast raced through the interconnecting passages below the hill and devastated one store after another. In a large underground hangar, carved out of rock and earth right in the centre of the complex, a thousand tons of debris crashed down on eighty V-1 flying-bombs, most of them newly delivered, crushing them into dust. Three hundred German personnel died, many of them mercifully quickly as the hill collapsed on top of them, but others to linger on for days in a nightmare of darkness, hunger, thirst and slow suffocation, hopelessly entombed with no chance of rescue.

  Yeoman made a complete circle round the scene of devastation, trying to assess results for the benefit of the Intelligence people. Then he radioed the others.

  ‘All right, chaps, that’s it. Good show. Let’s go home.’

  The Mosquitos turned and set course north-westwards, the sections joining up into formation. One by one, the pilots reported in.

  Three aircraft were missing. The Mosquitos flown by Sergeant Carr, of Yeoman’s section, and Flying Officer Atkins of Sloane’s Green Section were both burning on the hill; it was Atkins’ aircraft which Yeoman had seen lose part of its wing as he pulled up from his bomb run, and Carr had apparently failed to pull out in time after making his attack.