by John Nichol
A small crowd had gathered around the caravan parked alongside the tarmac that doubled as a control tower to see the venerable bomber off. Paraffin lamps flickered and guttered in the wind at the edge of the runway. Once the checks were completed, Ken Murray put on the brakes and opened the throttles. The Lancaster started to strain like a dog on a leash. The brakes were released; there was a pause, then, with a cacophonous roar, the plane began to move. Slowly – too slowly, it always seemed to those on board when it was fully laden – they gathered momentum. At last the tail was up and the speed increased, 80 mph … 90 … 95 … 100 … 105 … and it was still on the ground. 110 … 115 … and then the noise became a touch quieter as the pilot eased back the control column and the wheels left the ground.
‘Undercarriage up,’ Ken’s voice rang out across the intercom.
Mac cut in: ‘Gear up and locked, lights out.’
‘Flaps a quarter …’ Ken’s mantra continued until the wing flaps were fully retracted and throttles and boost were set to climbing speed. G-George was airborne at 9.37 p.m. GMT.
Scouse Nugent sat in his turret listening to the routine exchanges between pilot and control tower, running through the instrument checks, before thundering down the runway and slowly lifting off. He had forgotten to do up the chinstrap of his helmet, but that did not bother him. Instead he was thinking about the operation and how, with a heap of luck, he would be back kissing the tarmac, just as he had done after every single one of his 27 previous ops.
Once they hit a speed of 100 mph there was no turning back. Using every ounce of their skill, the pilot and his engineer sought to keep their vast machine steady until the time came when, under immense strain, some 68,000 pounds of metal and fuel and explosives would wrestle their way into the air. One mistake or small mechanical failure and the consequences could be devastating.
That night, only two aircraft failed to get airborne. The flaps rose on one Lancaster at Coningsby as it hurtled along the runway. By the time the pilot noticed it was too late to abort take-off. Once the wheels were up he tried to coax it into a climb, but the aircraft refused the invitation. It struck a post beyond the end of the runway, ripping open the tailplane and a fuel tank in one of the wings. Astonishingly, the pilot still managed to land safely and no one was hurt.
A second accident, at Skellingthorpe, provided another miraculous escape. A Lancaster burst a tyre as it accelerated, careering off the runway and badly damaging one of the wings. Despite its full fuel and bomb loads, there was no fire and none of the crew was harmed.
For the other 793 the perils of the night had only just begun. They climbed steadily to their assigned flying height – vitally important, since more than 800 of them were due to rendezvous over the North Sea and collisions were a genuine risk. As they ascended at approximately 100 feet per minute, the land beneath them faded to black. When they reached 17,000 feet the crews switched on their oxygen. If it failed, they only had a few minutes to find another supply or lose consciousness.
Looking around from his pilot seat – ‘like a throne’ – Rusty Waughman saw a bank of illuminated cloud, a vivid backdrop against which the shadows and silhouettes of the other bombers stood out as they made their way towards the assembly point. Rusty had never noticed this before. Knowing they were not alone was a great source of reassurance. He just hoped they would be less visible once they were over the European mainland. At 11.15 p.m. they left the Suffolk shores behind them and headed for a deadlier coast.
Rusty was flying a Lancaster Mark III coded ‘W’, known to them as ‘A Wing and a Prayer’. It was the first Lancaster he had ever flown, but it had already seen them through some sticky situations, which is why they named it after a patriotic song written in 1943 about a damaged aircraft returning home. After every op, as they approached the airfield at Ludford Magna, everyone on board would join in a rousing – and highly relieved – rendition.
What a show, what a fight,
We really hit our target for tonight.
How we sing as we limp through the air.
Look below, there’s our field over there.
With our full crew aboard
And in our trust in the Lord
We’re comin’ in on a wing and a prayer.
Rusty’s gunners tested their weapons. Curly, his flight engineer, had synchronised the engines so they were running in perfect pitch, and maintained a close eye on the instruments while Rusty engaged the automatic pilot. It would be a long flight and a long night, so he welcomed any opportunity to ease the burden. Ted Manners switched on the ABC equipment, making sure it had warmed up before they crossed the Belgian shores, where he and the other ABC aircraft, spread out among the stream, would activate their jamming signals once they picked up the radio transmissions between the enemy fighters and those on the ground.
As Dick Starkey climbed towards the Norfolk coast, there wasn’t a cloud in sight. As they reached their allotted height, he registered the low temperatures and something else he had never witnessed before, streaming from the tails of the bombers around him: vapour trails.
Fifty-two bombers failed to make it to the meeting point, forced to turn back through mechanical failure, mostly engine problems, but also failed oxygen supplies, problems with intercom or the GEE navigation sets. Few crews were keen to return to base prematurely, partly because of the stigma attached to early returns – the suspicion that you might be considered LMF – and partly because it meant the operation did not count towards a tour, so some pressed on if the problem was not deemed insurmountable.
Cy Barton’s Halifax left Burn at 10.12 p.m. Back home in New Malden, the Barton family, oblivious to the dangers he was about to face, took comfort in their nightly routine: Dad sitting in his armchair in front of the hearth doing his crossword; mother knitting on the sofa beside him; Cynthia, Joyce and Pamela upstairs in the front bedroom with the porridge-coloured wallpaper and small open fire. It was a cold night, so they would have removed the fire bricks and wrapped them in an old cloth to warm their beds. After reading stories to each other, they turned off the light and swapped tales in the dark before drifting off to sleep.
There was little talk in Cy’s Halifax as the broken cloud swirled off the wing tips. He insisted on a minimum of chat over the intercom, and swearing was forbidden, but his crew, like his family, idolised him, reassured by his calm demeanour and lack of panic at the helm, even under the most intense fire. Freddie Brice marked him down as ‘a fine judge of men. I had little fear flying with him; never any panic, and his calmness seemed to reach us all.’42
Nuremberg was their 19th mission. As the plane climbed, Freddie stared through his Perspex turret with increasing concern. A good night for the night fighter, he thought. Len Lambert had misgivings about the whole raid, which the brightness of the moon did little to dispel. But he set those doubts aside and gave Cy the course to meet up with the bomber stream.
From the coast of England to the assembly point was approximately 15 minutes’ flying time. The first wave consisted of around 100 aircraft, including the Pathfinder ‘openers’ who would be dropping their marker flares for the rest; it was less concentrated than those that followed, spread across the first 20 miles of the stream. Behind them were five more waves of around 138 aircraft each, each approximately 10 miles long. The theory was that if the bombers managed to stick to their allotted height and course, the stream would remain compact enough to ensure that their firepower would be as concentrated and severe as possible over the target.
The front of the stream was nearing Belgium. Across the intercom three words rang out:
‘Enemy coast ahead.’
CHAPTER 8
Jazz Music
Bruno Rupp
As they crossed the North Sea, Ron Butcher had been mesmerised by the moonlight shimmering on the water beneath them, but now that his Lancaster was forging its way over mainland Europe he turned back to his charts.
His brow furrowed as he plotted their position,
using the stars. They had been told to expect 80-knot winds, yet his recordings told him they were between 40 and 50 knots faster. To add to his disquiet, there was no sign of any turbulence from the slipstreams of their fellow bombers. Ron started to feel intensely vulnerable. ‘It made the crew feel terribly exposed to realise that other aircraft were not in close proximity.’ He began to worry that his estimates were incorrect and they had been blown off course. Should he continue to rely on the forecast? If he was right, and the winds were stronger than predicted, they would be propelled towards Nuremberg at a far greater speed than they had anticipated.
Sam Harris and his crew had encountered light flak as they passed over the enemy coast, but managed to fly through it unscathed. It was bitterly cold outside the aircraft – minus 31 degrees centigrade – and not much warmer inside, which might have been the reason Sam muddled his calculations. He had meant to add 17 minutes to the time on his chart, but added 14 instead. As a result, Ken began his turn for the long leg at the wrong point. Sam frantically checked and rechecked his charts according to the information transmitted from England and realised his mistake in time to direct his pilot back on to the right course.
Four minutes later the German city of Aachen appeared on their port bow. The whole sky was ablaze with searchlight beams and great arcs of flak, but Sam and his crew somehow avoided the worst of it.
Further back in the stream, Rusty Waughman and his crew approached Charleroi, 18 minutes away from the German border. ‘Turning point coming up, skipper,’ Alec, his navigator, called out. ‘Steer new course …’
They flew due east from Charleroi. As they reached Aachen they were rocked by flak and the air around them filled with the pungent smell of cordite. Rusty gripped the controls more tightly, bracing himself, but it soon subsided. His main concern remained the moon rather than the anti-aircraft fire. The Germans wouldn’t need radar to find them, he thought. There was simply nowhere to hide.
A series of ‘spikes’ appeared on the cathode ray set of Special Duties Operator Ted Manners. The radio broadcasts to enemy fighters had begun.
‘They’re on their way,’ Ted said.
Feldwebel Bruno Rupp was stationed at Langendiebach, near Frankfurt. The 23-year-old Luftwaffe pilot’s breath billowed in the crisp night air as he walked out of the station common room. He glanced towards the rows of idle Heinkel and Messerschmitt fighters as he pulled out his cigarette case. The moonlight glinted off the Perspex canopy that shielded each cockpit. There was little chance they would be taking off tonight, he decided.43 The enemy preferred to launch their ‘terror raids’ with ample cloud cover.
Since 4.15 that afternoon they had done little but play cards and wait. He puffed away absent-mindedly, wondering when they would be stood down. When the cold started to seep into his bones he tossed the butt to the ground and killed it with the heel of his flying boot.
Back in the warmth, the card school was still going strong. He pulled up a chair. The men who sat around the table with Bruno Rupp, or dozed fitfully elsewhere in the room, were members of a ferocious and rejuvenated fighting force. Until the summer of 1943 the Germans believed they possessed the defences to repel even the heaviest of Allied raids. But when Harris sent his bombers en masse to Hamburg in August 1943 their response, both on the ground and in the air, had proved inadequate.
Until the Hamburg raid they had had night fighters stationed at every route into Germany. They had divided their airspace into a grid, each box patrolled by one aircraft, guided to its target by ground radar – ground radar that was now being disrupted by Window, the thin strips of aluminium chaff thrown in bundles from Allied bombers.
Until recently, the Luftwaffe had stationed groups of night fighters around the major cities bombed by Allied forces. As a raid progressed, they would wait as long as possible to assess the location of the stream’s final target, before sending them in. Codenamed Wild Boar, this strategy obviated the need for radar and reduced the confusion caused by Window. But it had one major disadvantage. The scores of circling fighters all needed to land at the same bases when their fuel ran low, and there were frequent crashes and collisions.
A new approach was needed, and so Wild Boar was replaced by Tame Boar. The Tame Boar fighters were divided into five divisions, each with their own underground operations room, known as ‘Battle Opera Houses’. Once the fighters were airborne, control passed to the best-positioned operations centre, from where a lone radio-operator would give each pilot constant updates about the location and course of the invading force – the running commentary that Ted Manners and the other Special Duties Operators of 101 Squadron sought to jam.
The Battle Opera Houses co-ordinating the night fighter response were sophisticated affairs. Information gleaned from intelligence reports, listening posts and pilots in the air was fed on to giant glass maps which plotted the position, height, course and strength of the British bomber stream and the location of their own night fighters. ‘The whole [scene] was reminiscent of a huge lighted aquarium, with a multitude of water-beetles scuttling madly behind the glass walls.’44 Even accounting for the disruptive effects of Window, they were capable of plotting the action so concisely that the picture displayed in the bunkers was rarely more than 60 seconds behind the events unfolding in the skies.
The anti-aircraft batteries were as much of a threat to Allied crews as the night fighters. There were 50,000 guns stationed across Germany and the North Sea coast, ready to attack any aircraft that entered their airspace, of which 15,000 were heavy artillery pieces with a range of 25-30,000 feet. The lighter guns had a more modest range but, like their heavier counterparts, they all fired explosive shells which scattered shards of molten shrapnel, easily capable of destroying an aircraft’s control systems or slicing through its fuselage to kill or maim those on board.
These vast defensive systems stretched German manpower to its limit; women, veterans, even schoolboys and Russian PoWs were recruited to fire them. When they were concentrated over a target, the sky became a seething mass of exploding shrapnel. Every time Harry Evans and his crew flew into the maelstrom of red flashes and orange explosions from the defences around Berlin, he felt he would never make it through. ‘There’s nothing you can do except hope. The aircraft is being thrown and bumped around, and the shells are exploding all around you. The worst thing is to turn back prematurely because you have to get in and drop your bombs. It was absolute terror.’
Some anti-aircraft guns were guided by radar, others by an array of radar-guided searchlights. All crews feared being trapped in the beams of all the searchlights in a battery, which formed the shape of an inverse cone. ‘Being ‘coned’ was a terrifying experience,’ Harry Evans says. ‘It was like being caught in a spider’s web of powerful beams. To try and escape from their clutches, the pilot would throw the aircraft into sudden and violent manoeuvres, many of them involuntary because until the pilot’s eyes had adjusted to the brilliant light he couldn’t see the instruments.’
Fighters, flak and searchlights were a constant nightmare, but the Luftwaffe had developed another even more lethal weapon. Their traditional method of attack was to approach from behind at speeds of up to 300 mph, clearly visible to all but the most unobservant of rear gunners. A Lancaster pilot’s most common escape tactic was to execute a series of steep diving and climbing turns to port then starboard, a flight path similar in shape to a corkscrew, after which the manoeuvre was named.
Michael Beetham threw his Lancaster into a violent corkscrew during a training sortie which still haunts Reg Payne. ‘The immense strain broke one of the glycol plates and the glycol caught fire. The first thing I heard was “Prepare to abandon aircraft.” The flames died, but all of a sudden the fire re-ignited, only this time burning far more furiously. Because it was a training exercise there were 10 of us on board and four didn’t get out – our rear gunner, Fred Ball, and flight engineer, Don Moore, were among them. Don hadn’t even taken his parachute because it was a training flight
and he didn’t think he’d need it. As I jumped I could see him frantically looking for one. Fred Ball didn’t want to jump out; he was too scared – and that was the death of them both.
‘It was my first parachute jump and that was a real eye-opener too. We had a very lucky escape. Now we knew how dangerous and difficult it was to get out of a Lancaster. As I was coming down in the parachute, I looked back and saw the wing was flopping back and forwards like a leaf. I had been the last one to make it out.’
Though the corkscrew was disorientating for those on board and rendered them vulnerable as the plane levelled out between its twists and swoops, Rusty Waughman swore by it. ‘Corkscrewing placed tremendous strain on the airframe and called for a super-human effort from the pilot, but it was nearly always successful in throwing a night fighter off the scent.’
Now the night fighter pilots had discovered a more fundamental area of weakness: it was possible to fly beneath any bomber without being seen. The Luftwaffe’s engineers fitted their aircraft with two upward-firing machine-guns. The Lancaster crew’s first and often last indication of their enemy’s presence was when his shells slammed into the belly of their aircraft, laden with fuel and explosives. Those fortunate enough to parachute to safety could only discuss these ‘invisible’ attacks from behind the wire of their PoW camps.
The Germans had given an ironic codename to the new weapon, inspired by the angle of its elevation and the sound of its often fatal gunfire: Schräge Musik. Translated literally as ‘slanting music’, it was their slang for jazz – the decadent rhythms of the culture that the Nazis most detested.