Also present in the room was ‘B’ Flights commander, Squadron Leader Dickinson. A short, compact New Zealander; Carter warmed to him immediately. Brown eyes gave Carter an appraising stare and when he smiled, Dickinson revealed a prominent gap between his two front teeth.
Both Asher and Dickinson had seen action and had the DFC for their troubles. Asher had flown Blenheims during the withdrawal from France. When he was wounded, he got posted to a staff job at 2 Group Headquarters for a time before transferring to the heavies.
Dickinson had risen through the ranks swiftly and he’d temporarily commanded his previous squadron for a time when the CO had been lost on ops. He anticipated getting a unit of his own in due course.
Asher was pleased to see Carter. The squadron had only been formed six months before and in some respects was still finding its feet. Created from the nucleus of another squadron, the few veterans had done their best to bring on the new men, but attrition from ops and training accidents had only thinned out the old hands further. No one on the squadron had done a full tour like Carter had. Carters roommate was on nine. Dickinson and Asher had fifteen and fourteen respectively. ‘A’ Flights commander, Squadron Leader Church had done eight. An experienced officer was a boon he didn’t intend to waste.
“I know you’ve had six months out, but I’m sure it won’t take you long to find your feet again,” said Asher, his accent displaying a hint of a midlands lilt.
“I hope not, sir.”
“I’ll see if we can get you something easy first time out, but we are rather at the mercy of what Group sends our way as you can imagine.”
“I understand, sir. I’ll have a chat to some of the lads later on. I’ll just have to learn on the job as it were.” Dickinson produced a pack of cigarettes from a breast pocket and offered one to Carter. Carter shook his head so Dickinson lit one for himself and sat back, relaxed.
“I’d rather hoped to give you the opportunity to pull together a crew for yourself but I’m afraid that will have to wait for now. A few of the squadron have come down with chickenpox. The MO’s quarantined them but it’s left me short of a few pilots for the time being until they’ve recovered. I realise it’s far from ideal but for now I’d like you to take over Pilot Officer Lambert’s crew. They’ve done four ops already so they have some experience which is better than none at all. Squadron Leader, Dickinson can make the introductions later.”
Carter kept his face impassive but his stomach clenched when he heard that. Coming into an established crew could be very hard work, particularly as their new pilot.
In Bomber Command, there was no set method of how crews were formed. No one was ordered to crew up, it was just something that happened at OTU’s. A gunner might hear that such and such needed someone as tail end charlie. A pilot might be told that so and so was a very good navigator. It was an organic process as people tried each other on for size to see how they fitted together. Carter was very conscious that despite his experience, he would be the outsider and therefore viewed with suspicion.
“We’ll get you checked out when the weather clears tomorrow. I’m sure you’ll want to go up with your new crew as soon as possible so you can get to know each other better.” Carter nodded in agreement. “I won’t keep you. Welcome to 363, Mister Carter.”
Carter saluted and exited the office. He waited in Saunderson's office until Dickinson appeared a few minutes later and told him to follow him. Carter gasped as they went outside. The wind had gotten colder in the intervening time and they walked over to the Sergeants Mess. Dickinson tracked down Lambert’s crew and made the introductions. Carter reserved judgement for later, but he wasn’t encouraged by the first encounter.
The following day was hectic. Dickinson took Carter up himself first thing in the morning to see how he did. He had read Carters record, but he wanted to see the substance, not just the gloss. He had no concerns, and was happy to let him loose on his crews.
After lunch, Carters new crew were waiting for him at dispersal as he had requested. Lambert’s Manchester was coded P for Peter but the crew referred to the bomber as Popsie. There was no art adorning the nose, no name, but the ground crew had painted four little yellow bombs under the pilot’s window.
While he walked around doing his preflight check, Carter sorted through his feelings about the Manchester. Having flown them at OTU, he knew their reputation at first hand. A modern design, the Manchester was a mid wing monoplane with an all metal stressed skin. The fuselage had three power operated turrets to give a good all round field of fire. Two guns were in the nose turret, two in the mid upper turret halfway along the top of the fuselage and the rear turret housed four .303 machine guns. The bomb bay ran most of the length of the fuselage and it could carry a fairly respectable load into the heart of Germany.
The flying characteristics on the other hand were a mixed bag. The Manchester was a rock steady bombing platform and the ailerons were light and responsive, but the elevators were heavy and it needed a lot of effort to make the aircraft do what you wanted. A lack of longitudinal stability in early Manchester’s had been cured with the modification of larger tail control surfaces and the addition of a third vertical fin to the fuselage but it was still hard work.
It was the engines however that really let the Manchester down. On paper, it had seemed a good idea. Bolt two V12 engines onto a single crankcase to make a more powerful engine. In practice, the Vultures were prone to overheating, seizing up and throwing connecting big end bearings whenever they felt like it. The problems were bad enough that the engines had actually been derated so they could only deliver eighty five to ninety percent of their designed maximum. In real terms that meant when an engine decided to spit its dummy out and quit for the day, there wasn’t enough power to maintain height and the only direction you were going was down.
Once he was happy this particular Manchester was as ready as it was ever going to be, he went round to the nose to climb up the ladder. Before he could put a foot on the bottom rung, the navigator, a Flight Sergeant called Tinsley barged past and chucked his parachute pack up through the hatch. He followed it in and went past the cockpit, settling himself at his navigators table.
Carter clicked his tongue but stopped himself from saying anything. It was his rule to be the one to board first. It was partly a rank thing, partly a superstition. On every op, he’d boarded first and they all made it home; that was the way it was. The rules didn’t change just for an air test.
The second pilot, a blonde Flight Sergeant called Forrester got in next. Carter tapped his foot in annoyance but kept quiet. Steaming, he waited until the wireless op, Fitzgerald went up the ladder before getting on board himself.
Coming up into the cockpit, Carter enjoyed the spacious interior. The view was excellent with a spacious cockpit and canopy. He thought the layout of the instruments was very good and anything was better than the cramped cockpit of his Hampden. Popularly known as the flying suitcase, the Hampden was only wide enough for a single person. If the pilot was hit, there was virtually nothing the rest of the crew could do about it.
In comparison, the Manchester was huge and even had dual controls in the cockpit. Carter sat on the left hand side and Forrester had a folding seat to the right. When he wasn’t flying, the second pilot had to monitor the engines and help the pilot with the throttles. Second Dicky's like Forrester would do a few trips to learn the ropes from a more experienced pilot and eventually progress to having their own crew.
Carter stowed his parachute behind his seat and started getting settled. Forrester was already going through the start up sequence. Carter watched him smoothly get things ready and was mollified somewhat that at least one crew member seemed to know what he was doing.
Once the engines were started they taxied round the perimeter track and lined up on the runway. The tower gave them a green and they were off. Carter advanced the throttles and Forrester was right next to him, his own hand following his pilots, ready to take over when Carter
put both hands on the yoke.
Carter got the tail up as soon as possible as Forrester put the throttles to the max. As the airspeed passed 100mph, Carter kept the aircraft balanced on its main wheels, using the rudders to keep it straight. Forrester glanced across at Carter but his pilot kept his gaze focused forwards. At 110, Carter pulled the yoke back in one smooth pull. With no bombs on board and only a limited amount of fuel, the Manchester practically bounded into the air. At five hundred feet, Forrester raised the flaps and the undercarriage. Carter felt the slight thump as the wheels came to rest in their nacelles.
Carter levelled off at three thousand feet, cruising over an ocean of thick clouds. As soon as they stopped climbing the chat started.
“Hey, Fitz, you seeing your WAAF tonight?” asked the tail gunner, a short pugnacious type called Smith.
“I am,” said Fitzgerald. “And I’d kindly ask you to not follow me on the bus like last time. A fellow needs space to work.”
“Hark at you,” chipped in Tinsley. “What about what you did at the dance? Telling my date I had a medical condition. She wouldn’t let me touch her after that.”
“Don’t worry about it, ducks,” laughed Fitzgerald. “I’ll get you a nice certificate done up from the MO giving you a clean bill of health.”
“When you’re quite ready?” Carter asked coldly, cutting across the banter, his tone glacial. Conversation came to a crashing halt. Forrester winced at the interplay over the R/T. Tinsley leaned back in his seat and looked up the fuselage towards the cockpit glowering at their new pilots back.
Carter took them up to twelve thousand feet and they went on oxygen. He checked each man in turn, getting a feeling for how they responded to calls. He then put the crew through the same series of tests he put the trainees through at the OTU’s. He wanted to see what they could do and how this particular Manchester performed. All aircraft had their little ways and it was better to find out any peculiarities now rather than over Germany.
At fourteen thousand the Manchester was wallowing but there was no sloppiness in the yoke. The control cables were nice and tight and gave good response. He had Forrester feather the starboard engine and then Carter fought the aircraft for five minutes.
He went to full power on the remaining engine but it needed quite a lot of rudder to keep the nose pointing straight. His leg started to go numb from the effort. Even though they weren’t weighed down with bombs, there was only a thin margin of reserve power to spare. He found he could just about maintain height but it was hard work. God help them if an engine went out when they had a full bombload.
They restarted the starboard engine and ambled along for a while, letting the temperatures on the port engine settle back down. They had shot up alarmingly fast and Carter saw there was going to be little leeway in the event of an emergency.
“Pilot to navigator,” he called over the intercom.
“Yes, sir.”
“Can I have a course for home, please?” There was a long pause. “Course please, navigator," Carter repeated his demand when a response was not forthcoming, his tone peremptory.
“One moment, sir.”
“Don’t you know?” Carter asked sharply.
Fitzgerald looked round at Tinsley who was sat at his desk, rapidly turning his map every which way.
“Steer two four three, magnetic,” the hapless navigator said, plucking a figure out of thin air.
Distinctly unimpressed, Carter turned onto the course given. Fitzgerald rapidly used his equipment to get a bearing on the stations transmitter. He wrote it down on a slip of paper and held it round the bulkhead, waving his hand to get Tinsley’s attention. Tinsley took it and gratefully found it was only a few degrees off the course he had given. He started figuring out where they could be and issued a correction a few minutes later, explaining that the wind had veered, pushing them off course. That seemed to satisfy their pilot and nothing more was said.
On the run back to Amber Hill, a flight of Spitfires sauntered past overhead. They were a good two or three thousand feet above them heading west. The fighters stayed well clear. They’d had too many experiences where a bored gunner opened up on them. The R/T stayed quiet so Carter was not one to turn down an opportunity.
"Fighters! Fighters! Corkscrew to port, GO!"
The Manchester lurched into a bank to port. Carter stamped on the rudder pedal and then rammed the starboard throttle to the stops. The bomber fell out of the sky. The fuselage creaked, the engines screamed. The Manchester was close to ninety degrees of bank and heading down fast.
Carter evened out the throttles and then gritted his teeth as he hauled the yoke to the right. The roll reversed and he pulled back on the controls, hugging them to his stomach. It took every ounce of strength to keep that yoke back. He grunted as his weight increased and he fought to keep his head against the back of the pilot’s seat. He stood the Manchester on her other wing tip as she swooped back up.
The nose pointed to the sky and Carter could feel the buffet in the controls as the airspeed bled off. Not wanting to stall, he let the nose fall away, keeping a firm grip on the controls to stop her rolling onto her back. As they descended again, he let the airspeed build back up before resuming level flight.
“You take her,” he told Forrester. He breathed heavily. That had been very hard work. His arms were like lead and he reflected that it would take a lot to make the Manchester behave if there was a sustained nightfighter attack.
The R/T burst into life again. Protest piled upon protest as the crew recovered from having the shock of their lives. There had been a moment of stomach clenching terror as the word 'fighter' burned into their brains and then the Manchester had careened across the sky. Smith fished out a hanky from up his sleeve and held it against his nose. During that first dive, he had banged his face against the turret control yokes. He was still seeing stars when they’d levelled off.
Tinsley was on the floor, picking up his pencils and maps. He shot a venomous glare at Carters back while he scrabbled around, feeling for the other things that had gone flying. In the cockpit, Forrester had hung on for grim life as he was treated to a grandstand view of the earth and then the sky and then the earth again. They had corkscrewed once before on a raid, but that had been in the dark. When they had done it at OTU it had been a cloudy day and they had never seen the ground. He wasn’t sure which was better, at least in the dark you had no idea what was going on.
Carter let them vent for a few more minutes and then cracked the whip. The crew went quiet, shocked at being spoken to like that. They stewed for the remainder of the flight. No one was particularly bothered when Carter brought it in as light as a feather and taxied back to their starting point.
After they’d got down from the bomber, Carter gathered them together by the tail. They clumped together as a group, as Carter stood in front of them, his arms crossed, the outsider.
"That was an interesting start," he said, his tone crisp, clipped. "I won't lie; I can't say I was particularly impressed today. R/T procedure was lax. There was far too much chatter up there. Training flights are not a social occasion." He turned a withering gaze on Tinsley. "I expect my navigators to know where they are at all times and when I ask for a course, I want it. Not in five minutes, not in an hour, I want it fast!" He clicked his fingers for emphasis. "And why did no one tell me about the Spitfires coming up from astern?" he asked the group as a collective whole, although the question was firmly aimed at the two gunners. Smith glared back at him over the top of a bloody hanky; his eyes wild with anger. Jones shrugged.
"They were only Spitfires, sir. Nothing to worry about." It sounded feeble and was said with little conviction. Forrester bit his lip.
"I expect to be told when anything is in the sky near us," Carter replied curtly. He could see a great deal of anger and indignation stood before him so he tried to pour some oil on the troubled waters he had stirred up.
"When we go up in the air, you have every right to expect me to be abl
e to do my job. That means I've got to fly us there and get us back and if it means throwing her around the sky to do it, I will. In return, I have every right to expect that you can do your jobs too. Bear that in mind before we go up again." Speech over, he walked off before he said something he regretted.
Coming into an established crew, he didn’t have the time to have the 'with our old skipper we did, this, that, the other' types of conversation. They would just have to fit themselves to him as far as he was concerned. He’d been close with his last crew. That was an inevitable fact of life after flying thirty ops together. Some were dead now, he wasn’t ready to join them just yet.
Dickinson found him later in the Officers Mess, reading a copy of the pilots notes while he was nursing a pint. His Flight Commander gestured to the other armchair.
"May I?"
Carter looked up and put the notes aside.
"Of course, sir."
Dickinson slid in to the beat up armchair and put his own pint on the side table between them.
"How did the first meeting go?"
Carter shrugged. He had no doubt Dickinson had heard things through the usual sources that any operational unit had.
"I don't think I'll be winning a popularity contest," he said ruefully. Dickinson gave him a wry smile. He thought it would be something like that.
When he had seen Carter in the CO's office, he had seen the tension in him. Carter had sat slightly hunched forward in his chair, his arms balanced on the tops of his legs. Dickinson was quite sure that if he had mentioned this to Carter, he would have had no recollection of it. The New Zealander had written that off to first day nerves. He could not say the same for the air test.
Carter flew competently enough. He was smooth on the controls and precise in how he set up the aircraft for landing, but there had been a brittleness there as well. His eyes were bright, the gaze just that little bit too fixed and intense. Dickinson knew what this was of course. He had seen other men under severe strain, men who had been pushed to the limit.
Maximum Effort Page 3
