The officer who commanded the Halifax squadron was a New Zealander, a certain Wing Commander David Pittaway. In October 1939, while they were acting as liaison officers with Bomber Command, Armstrong and Baird had accompanied Pittaway — then a flight lieutenant — on a hazardous daylight bombing mission to the German naval base at Wilhelmshaven, a sortie that had cost the squadron nine Wellingtons out of twelve. Armstrong and Pittaway had both been injured after their Wellington crash-landed back at base afterwards; Baird had been rescued by a Dutch trawler after the aircraft in which he was flying was shot down into the North Sea.
Their paths had crossed again in June 1940 when Armstrong, attached to the French Air Force, had been flying from an airfield near the Alps in the last days before France’s collapse. Pittaway’s Wellingtons had landed there to refuel before setting out to bomb Genoa, and Armstrong had gone along for the ride. Once again, they had barely escaped with their lives after being shot down in error by a French night-fighter pilot, who had mistaken their Wellington for an intruding Italian bomber.
It all seemed a very long time ago.
The Halifaxes came in to land one by one, the throaty roar of their Rolls-Royce Merlin engines dwindling. Each aircraft reached its assigned dispersal point and trucks went out to pick up the crews. Armstrong and Baird made their way back to the Officers’ Mess, knowing that the commissioned members of the Halifax crews would be dropped off there before the rest went on to the Sergeants’ Mess.
They met Pittaway in the Mess ante-room, shortly before lunch. “You made it, then,” the New Zealander said simply. Armstrong grinned at him as he shook his hand.
“Getting to be a habit,” he replied. “You remember Dickie Baird, our intrepid naval aviator?”
“I do indeed,” Pittaway said, greeting the Fleet Air Arm officer. “So this bloke has roped you into his private air force, then.” It was a statement, not a question.
“My second in command,” Armstrong told him. Pittaway nodded and beckoned to one of the dozen or so officers who were assembling in the ante-room, a flight lieutenant with a balding head and a substantial moustache. The New Zealander introduced him as Don Barker.
“You can fly with Don,” he said to Baird. “He’s safe enough. Been around for a while.” Later, Baird discovered that Barker had flown Blenheims in the disastrous days of the Battle of France, and that he was one of the few survivors of the squadron to which he had then belonged.
The Mess dining room was practically deserted. Armstrong knew that the Stirling squadron resident at Oakington had been out on operations the night before — he had watched the aircraft taking off — and that it had been a long trip, so most of the aircrews were probably still in bed. The conversation over lunch was desultory, but that was usual with a mission in the offing. He guessed that Pittaway’s crews, for security reasons, would not yet know the nature of tonight’s target. That would be revealed at the briefing, which was to be held in a couple of hours’ time. The ground crews would already be at work on the aircraft, checking all the systems — despite the fact that they would have been checked before the Halifaxes flew down to Oakington — and loading the bombs.
The Stirling crews were just starting to trickle into the dining room as Armstrong and the others were leaving. The visitors attracted one or two curious looks, but no one said anything. A few minutes later, over coffee, Armstrong quietly asked Pittaway what he thought of the Halifax. The New Zealander shrugged.
“It’s early days yet,” he admitted. “She has a good bomb load — thirteen thousand pounds maximum — and she’s got a range of eighteen hundred miles or so. She’ll improve after Handley Page have carried out a few modifications. For instance, our Mark Ones don’t have a mid-upper gun turret, but that’s being fitted to the next batch, so I understand, and the power-operated nose gun turret is being dispensed with. It’s too heavy, and causes too much drag. But the Halifax is streets ahead of the Stirling, which is a complete bloody heap. Its wings are too short, and it won’t go above fourteen thousand feet with anything like a respectable bomb load.”
Armstrong nodded. He was familiar with the sad tale of the Short Stirling: the bomber was originally to have had a wing span of 112 feet, which would have given it a good high altitude performance, but on the orders of the Air Ministry this had been reduced to ninety-nine feet so that the aircraft would fit into existing hangars. Its lack of an adequate operational ceiling made it very vulnerable to anti-aircraft fire.
The Halifax crews assembled in Oakington’s briefing room at three o’clock. There were forty-two men in all, for each bomber carried a crew of seven. Armstrong and Baird sat at the back, the former reflecting that every briefing room in Bomber Command looked exactly the same, from the raised dais with its blackboard and maps — the latter set up by the Intelligence Officer, who was also present, and for the moment concealed by a curtain — to the aircraft recognition posters pinned to the walls.
Pittaway ascended the dais and stood facing the expectant crews for a moment, then turned and pulled a cord, drawing back the curtains to reveal a map of the English Channel area. A red ribbon stretched across it, from Oakington to Brest. In the audience, somebody groaned.
“All right, all right,” Pittaway said, “so you’d rather be going to Berlin. Well, instead, you’re going to Brest, together with one hundred and ten other aircraft — Wellingtons, Whitleys and Blenheims. As you will doubtless have guessed, your targets are the German warships there. And you’ll be going in first.”
There were more groans, and a flight sergeant with ‘Canada’ flashes on the shoulders of his tunic raised his hand.
“Excuse me, sir,” he said politely, “but you keep using this little word ‘you’. I take it you’ll be coming along as well?”
Pittaway grinned at him as a few chuckles broke out. “Don’t worry, Jacko. I want to see if your bombing’s going to be any improvement on your last performance. Now then, back to business. We’ll be going in at eight thousand feet to improve our chances of sighting the ships. With any luck, we’ll be over Brest before the enemy has time to put up a smoke screen. We’ll each be carrying four two thousand pounders, plus incendiaries and parachute flares. As well as hitting the ships, the idea is to light up the target like a Christmas tree, so that even if it’s obscured by the time the main force arrives — and it won’t be far behind us — it will be able to use our flares as an aiming point.
“Now, this isn’t a long trip — three hundred nautical miles to the target, or thereabouts — and it’s over water all the way after we cross the English coast, so we don’t have to worry about fighters or flak until we are on the run-up to Brest, across this little peninsula here.” He picked up a snooker cue which had been propped against the wall and tapped the map with it.
“The biggest danger,” he went on, “will be getting tangled up with aircraft of the main force, some of which we shall actually overtake en route, so watch out for that. They’ll be at a higher level than us, in theory, but you never know. That’s all I have to say for the moment, so I’m going to hand you over to the ‘Spy’, who will want to give you the good news about flak defences and so on.”
The Intelligence Officer, an immaculately uniformed individual with the single blue ring of a flying officer around the sleeves of his tunic — from one cuff of which a spotted handkerchief protruded — adjusted his glasses and took Pittaway’s place on the dais. He addressed the assembly in a measured, cultured voice. Armstrong had met him in the Mess the previous evening, and had learned that the Intelligence Officer had, in a previous existence, been a senior curator in a famous museum. This war, he mused, was certainly doing strange things to people.
“Gentlemen,” the Intelligence Officer said, “I know that to many of you, attacks on the German Navy must seem like a waste of effort. It must seem that you would be far better employed in attacking Germany’s war industries. But let me assure you that the kind of operation you will be flying tonight is more vital than any oth
er to the survival of Britain.
“Unlike the Royal Navy, which is divided between the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, the Germans can afford to concentrate all their naval assets in the Atlantic. Their submarine fleet is increasing all the time, but at the moment their fast, heavily-armed warships constitute the main threat to our convoys. The position, according to our latest intelligence reports, is that three of their heavy cruisers, the Scheer, Lutzow and Hipper, are in Kiel; another, the Prinz Eugen, is at Gdynia on the Baltic, along with a new battleship, the Bismarck. Another battleship, the Tirpitz, is fitting out at Wilhelmshaven. Our photo-recce boys are keeping a close watch on all these vessels, and if any of them try to break out into the Atlantic, we ought to know about it in good time. Besides, Bomber Command is making constant attacks on Kiel, and although results haven’t been very promising so far, there’s always the chance that our bombers might inflict damage on the cruisers and put one or more of them out of action.”
Armstrong and Baird exchanged glances. Kiel, they knew, was a difficult target, and heavily defended; although the town had been hit, there was no evidence that the warships had suffered at all.
The Intelligence Officer turned to the map and pointed at Brest.
“Here, then, is the main threat,” he said. “The Scharnhorst and Gneisenau. At any moment, they might venture out into the Atlantic again to prey on our convoys. But we think they are waiting for something. There are indications that some — perhaps even all of — the heavy warships might try to break out from their locations in northern Germany and sail for the French ports. If that happens, the Germans will have a concentration of firepower the Royal Navy will be hard pressed to match. So the sinking of those two battlecruisers is of paramount importance. In fact, it’s a matter of survival.”
He paused to let his words sink in, then continued with his part of the briefing, pointing out the sites of the main anti-aircraft batteries protecting Brest harbour. Including the warships’ weapons, the bombers would have to run the gauntlet of some 250 guns in and around the anchorage.
The Meteorological Officer, next on the dais, predicted rain squalls en route to the target, but clear skies over it. There would be no moon; it was in its last quarter, and would already have set two hours before take-off time, which was fixed for 2100.
Later, as Armstrong and Baird made their way back to the Officers’ Mess, Baird glanced at his watch and made what, to his companion, seemed a strange remark.
“I ought to be coming out of church about now,” he said quietly.
Puzzled, Armstrong looked at him. “What?”
“It’s Good Friday,” Baird said, “and I’m a Catholic, albeit not a very good one. Catholics celebrate Mass at three o’clock on Good Friday afternoon. My folks will have been doing just that right now, in the little church in Stornoway.”
“Good Lord! I hadn’t realised that it was Easter weekend,” Armstrong admitted. “I should have done, when fish was the only thing on the lunchtime menu. Anyway, there’ll be a Roman Catholic chapel somewhere on the station. Can’t you go later on? There’s plenty of time.”
Baird nodded, and they walked on in silence. Armstrong had never given much thought to religion; his parents, although professing to be Church of England, did not attend services, with the exception perhaps of Harvest Festival, and he had a sneaking suspicion that many of those who went to church regularly did so as a matter of social ritual, rather than genuine belief. Still, he thought, each to his own.
Back at the Mess, Armstrong did what he always did when there was time to kill before an operational sortie: he went to bed. Sleep never eluded him on such occasions, and it was the best way he knew of cutting out the irksome waiting period. Later, after being awakened by one of the Mess stewards, he showered and shaved; that was another ritual, based on the theory that if he should be shot down over enemy territory and survive, it would be a good thing to enter captivity clean and shaven.
He joined the others for the meal. Afterwards, there was a short wait until the trucks came to pick them up, having already collected the NCO aircrew. At bomber bases all over eastern England a similar ritual was being enacted as the hundred or so crews assigned to tonight’s operation headed for their bombers. The Whitleys, based in Yorkshire and a good thirty miles per hour slower than the other bombers that made up the attacking force, would already have taken off.
To Armstrong, used to nothing larger than twin-engined Blenheims and Beaufighters, the Halifax appeared awesomely large as he settled himself into the small spare seat that swung out from the starboard side of the cockpit and glanced down through the side window at the ground, twenty feet below. With all the crew in their positions, Pittaway ran through the lengthy pre-flight checklist. The engines had already been primed by the ground crew; now, one by one, they burst into life with the harsh crackling, spitting sound that was peculiar to the Rolls-Royce Merlin. When all four were running smoothly, Pittaway stuck his arm through his side window, waving to the ground crew to remove the chocks. The airmen pulled the chocks clear of the main wheels and, in the dim light of the dispersal, gave a thumbs-up signal to indicate that their job was done.
Pittaway released the brakes in a hiss of compressed air and the Halifax moved slowly forward out of its dispersal, rumbling along the taxi track, followed by the other five bombers. At the entrance to the runway he ran up the engines to full power in turn, each time checking the two-stage blower, propeller pitch control and the magnetos. Satisfied that all was well, he started his take-off checks.
“Okay. Ready for take-off, wireless op.”
Behind the two pilots, the wireless operator, who had taken up temporary station in the perspex astrodome on top of the fuselage, flashed a light towards the control tower, for strict radio silence was being observed. A green light answered and the signaller scrambled back into his position in the nose, below the pilot’s seat. The Halifax’s nose was nine feet deep, allowing plenty of room for the pilot, wireless operator, navigator — whose plotting table was under the front gun turret — and the gunner. The flight engineer’s console was immediately to the rear of the flight deck.
Pittaway turned the Halifax on to the runway. Armstrong listened over the intercom as the pilot went through the checklist.
“Flaps thirty…radiators closed…throttles locked. Prepare to take off. All clear behind, rear gunner?”
“All clear behind, skipper.”
Pittaway placed his hand on the four throttles, mounted close together on their quadrant in the centre of the instrument panel, and eased them forward.
“Full power.” The New Zealander opened the throttles wide and the Halifax accelerated forward with a terrific surge of power as Pittaway released the brakes, which he had applied while the engines were being run up. The tail rose and the lights of the runway flarepath flickered past the bomber’s wingtips as it gathered speed, rumbling and vibrating.
At length the rumbling and the vibration ceased. The Halifax was airborne.
“Climbing power…wheels up…flaps up.”
They climbed steadily into the night sky, turning gently on to a south-easterly heading, and levelled off at 8,000 feet, throttling back to cruising power. The airspeed indicator showed 220 miles per hour. They flew on over a darkened southern England, passing to the east of London, their track taking them over Reading and across the coast at Bournemouth. Ahead lay the broad expanse of the English Channel, dark and sinister.
They had been flying for about fifty minutes when a sudden jolt rocked the aircraft. Pittaway immediately altered course to starboard and the buffeting ceased.
“Something’s slipstream,” Pittaway remarked. “One of the Whitleys, I guess. He’s lower than he ought to be.” They saw nothing and flew on. From time to time, the navigator issued small course corrections. At length, he announced that Guernsey was twenty-five miles off the bomber’s port wing, and that they would be making landfall on the enemy coast in thirty minutes. The six Halifaxes were now in t
he vanguard of the bomber stream.
After a few more minutes, the navigator left his plotting table and crawled forward into the nose, lying prone on his bomb-aiming position mattress. He plugged himself into the intercom socket there and checked that the pilot could hear him. There was silence for a while, and then:
“Enemy coast ahead, skipper. Spot on. Whoops — there go the searchlights.”
Armstrong, peering ahead through the perspex, suddenly found himself dazzled as half a dozen searchlight beams, still some distance away, speared up into the night. A few more minutes crept by, and then the navigator/bomb aimer announced that they were crossing the coast, right on track, with twenty miles to run to their target.
“Okay,” Pittaway said. “Keep your eyes peeled, gunners. There may be night fighters. Hang on to your seat, Ken. This could be rough.” It was an unnecessary order; Armstrong was already hanging on to his seat, and feeling extremely vulnerable. The probing searchlights had still not found them.
“This is beautiful,” the navigator said. “I can see everything.” Although there was no moon, the harbour area ahead of them was clearly defined against the surrounding land.
“Bomb doors open.”
The Halifax shuddered slightly as Pittaway pulled a lever and the bomb-bay doors swung down into the slipstream. The four 2,000-pound bombs the aircraft was carrying swayed gently in their shackles.
“Left two degrees, skipper. I can see the dock area nicely…that’s good. That’s good. Hold her steady.”
The flak started to come up, wicked red flashes bursting across the sky above them. The German gunners were misjudging their height badly. Armstrong prayed that they would keep on doing so. Although mainly a fighter and photo-recce pilot, he had flown on several bombing missions, and had found every one more nerve-racking than the one before. This, he decided, was not for him.
In the nose, the navigator-turned-bomb aimer was keeping up his chant, exhorting the pilot to hold the aircraft steady. Suddenly, there was a bright orange flash, dead ahead, and a pungent reek of explosive invaded the cockpit. Pittaway fought hard to keep on course as the blast wave struck the aircraft.
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