Carter thought about what a week it had been. Six aircraft down, three crews gone and only one of them lost to enemy action. Carter always knew ops could be dangerous, but this week had highlighted just how deadly the Manchester’s could be. With an aircraft like that, who needed enemies?
10 - Tremors
The corridors of power in the Air Ministry echoed to the sound of feet striding down the polished halls. Tugging on his sleeves, Sir Richard Peirse fumed as he was shown to the meeting room. Only the week before, as the head of Bomber Command, he had been carpeted by the Prime Minister at Chequers after a dreadful night raid to Berlin.
The press headlines had been upbeat, squawking the propaganda line about smashing the Hun. In fact, it had been a near disaster. The main force had lost over twelve percent that night. Even though the experts were predicting storms, thick cloud, hail and probable icing he had sent them to bomb the big city. It had been a bad mistake, a costly one too, with thirty seven aircraft lost on that raid and others that had gone out that night.
Churchill had lashed him with figures, the gruff voice that was so familiar over the radio berated him for taking too many risks with his squadrons. In four months, Bomber Command had lost five hundred twenty six aircraft and crews, the equivalent of their entire front line strength.
Peirse knew where the figures had come from, Churchill’s pet attack dog Baron Cherwell; Baron Berlin he was called behind his back. He was Churchill’s leading scientific advisor, and never a day went by when he did not write a missive to the Prime Minister on subjects as diverse as redistributing shipping to the Atlantic or maximising egg production.
Born to German parents, he had that haughty German manner one sees in the Prussians and strong ideas on science and the advancement of society. A loyal friend to Churchill he had accompanied him on a trip to Germany in 1932 and been one of the few to see the growing shadows of war, even when everyone else did not.
Cherwell’s personal brainchild was the statistical department, S-Branch, that collated millions of pieces of information to produce detailed analysis on a variety of subjects. Churchill did everything at a fast pace, he liked to have information at his fingertips and Cherwell and his statisticians provided it.
Peirse said nothing while fact after fact was trotted out to question the entire bombing effort. He knew the source of those figures too. Cherwell’s secretary, David Bensusan-Butt had written a report that had crossed Peirse’s desk in the middle of August. Peirse knew Bomber Command was under scrutiny. It was a behemoth that sucked up supplies, men and vital war material. Avaricious eyes would have been very happy to appropriate those resources for their own area of war.
Each four engined Short Stirling bomber drank over two thousand gallons of petrol and carried 14,000lb of bombs on a single raid. It had a crew of seven trained men who more often than not had spent the best part of the last eighteen months being trained in their trade. Times that by twenty or so for a squadron, times the number of squadrons by twenty, thirty, forty. That was an expensive nights work. The thing was, Bomber Command were just about the only ones taking the fight to the enemy and Peirse had said so, standing his ground and fighting his corner.
When Britain found itself alone after the miracle of Dunkirk, the three services discovered that the usual pecking order had been upset. The RN was doing what it had always done, keeping the sea lanes open and shepherding vital supplies to England, running the gauntlet of the U-Boat packs to do it. Unable to challenge the might of the German army on its own, the army had been relegated to the fringes of the action in North Africa against Rommel. That had left the RAF leading the offensive.
That fact had not gone unnoticed. The propaganda machine was hard at work, painting a picture of fighting men standing up to the Hun, even when the newspaper headlines were bleak elsewhere. During the summer, cinemas had been filled while people watched the plucky crew of F for Freddie going in at low level to duff up Jerry and give him a thrashing in Target For Tonight. It was good stuff and something that raised public awareness of what the RAF was doing. The RAF was fighting a battle every few days. Crews were going out into the dark night after night, reporting they had pranged the target and given Jerry another bloody nose, six of the best.
The thing was, this glittering vision of success came entirely from crew interrogations. Asking questions of men after they landed, hopped up on coffee and adrenalin, ears buzzing after hours in the air was perhaps not the best way of getting an accurate assessment of damage done. Aware of these limitations, earlier in the year, Bomber Command had fitted certain aircraft with cameras that went off when the bombs were dropped so the aiming point could be assessed. Reconnaissance aircraft also flew over in daylight to photograph targets and provide updates. That information was combined from what was known of the effects of the Germans blitz on England’s own cities to estimate the affects on German industry.
When Butt’s report landed it had gone off like a proverbial bomb. Contrary to the prevailing view, Butt’s analysis contended that only about one third of all aircraft actually reached their target and even that was only defined as getting within five miles of the aiming point in the first place. A third of all aircraft dispatched had not even managed that and when Butt analysed target information for the Ruhr those figures got worse.
Peirse knew there were new aircraft and navigational aids on the horizon, but that didn’t help when the Prime Minister was flaying him with neat little charts that spelled out in stark terms the cost of waging war on Germany. Some people argued the cost was too high.
Coastal Command would have no hesitation in taking as many bomber squadrons as they could lay their hands on to patrol the convoy routes. Providing an airborne shield over the convoys might just deter a few more U-boats and let a few more convoys through. Putting more food on tables was an influential argument to divert resources from Bomber Command.
Peirse had called a meeting of his senior commanders and they had walked through Butt’s report backwards and forwards. There were some hard truths in its pages. They all knew that bad weather played merry hell with navigation. New moon periods increased accuracy but also made things easier for the German nightfighters. Butt’s report didn’t have to make the choices these men made. Cold facts didn’t take into account the compromises any commander had to face when sending his troops off to war.
Professional pride was stung. Butt was wrong, his statistics were faulty it was claimed. More simply, Butt was a statistician, what did he know about analysing photographs? He was twisting things to suit his conclusion went another argument.
The RAF fought back, their way. The Directorate of Bombing Operations delivered their response in September, concluding that a force of bombers could flatten German towns. How many bombers would that take they were asked? Four thousand was the response. Sir Charles Portal, Chief of the Air Staff went to bat and argued such a force of bombers could win the war in six months.
This was an old argument that had been heard before. During the inter war years, the phrase, ‘the bomber shall always get through’ had been used a number of times to keep the RAF funded. No one had ever considered the possibility that a bomber might get through but miss when it got there; now they were being told exactly that in Butt’s report. The casualty figures showed not everyone got through either. Now Portal was arguing that with more aircraft they would be able to deliver the killer blow. Not everyone was convinced.
When he had returned to Bomber Command from Chequers, Peirse had half expected to find his posting on his desk. Churchill hated failure and he could be ruthless when the mood took him. In North Africa he had swiftly replaced Wavell with Auchinlek. Peirse had no doubts he could suffer a similar fate in an instant if things did not improve.
He sent his bombers out two nights later, but he kept it small, one hundred aircraft. Hamburg was an easier target and only one Wellington was lost, but the damage to Bomber Commands prestige had been done. The seeds of doubt had been planted.
It was therefore with some apprehension that he was shown into the room to find Air Chief Marshall Portal stood by the marble fireplace. He was in mufti, dressed in a dark blue three piece suit, the twinkle of a watch chain visible across the waistcoat. Two of his secretaries were off to one side and Cherwell was sat behind a heavy dark table topped in dark green leather. It was not lost on Peirse that a single chair was on one side of the table and everyone else’s was on the other.
He was served tea but apart from one sip, he didn’t touch it. The cup and saucer sat on the table, slowly cooling. There was the usual small talk, but the tone was stilted, everyone aware of an as yet unnamed elephant in the room with them. Portal gestured to the chair and Peirse girded himself for the grilling to come.
“My dear, Richard, so good of you to come,” said Portal, his voice friendly, as if this was how he talked every day when someone was about to get the chop. “I hope the drive wasn’t too tiresome for you.”
Peirse fumed on the way back to Bomber Command. Civil servants had intruded on the lawn and stuck their noses where they didn’t belong and he was now going to have to pick up the pieces. His staff officer refrained from asking what had happened, one look told him the chief wanted some time to himself.
The Chief of the Air Staff was not unsympathetic to the situation. Portal himself had been AOC of Bomber Command in 1940 before being made Air Chief Marshall. He knew how difficult the job was, but despite his sympathies for his successor, the political landscape was very different now. There was also the personal connection. Peirse had been at the RAF Staff College with Portal in 1922 but even that was not enough to spare him from the full weight of political disapproval.
Politics was a matter of brinkmanship, balancing competing interests towards a common goal and at the critical moment, the Butt report had shown that Bomber Command was not measuring up. Butt and Cherwell had done their work well. Bomber Command itself had been the chicken on the chopping block, with the blade only an inch away from the neck.
The Air Staff had been able to argue that even if heavy bombing on its own did not win the war, it couldn’t be questioned that a sustained bombing campaign would weaken their resolve. Even the Prime Minister couldn’t argue with the logic of that. He knew that if you asked anyone on the street what they wanted to see done to the Germans, they would say they deserved a blitz of their own, in return for what had been done to Coventry, Liverpool and a host of other places. It had been a close call. Peirse took what few crumbs of comfort he could. Bomber Command would continue and he had his head.
Two days later, Group Captain Etheridge, was stood at the window to his office when Asher answered his summons. Located in the main admin building, Etheridge’s office was on the upper floor. He had chosen a corner office with windows that allowed him to see the wide expanse of the airfield. The other side looked out over a sea of Nissen huts and low brick buildings that made up the layout of any wartime airfield. Despite the cold, he had the window cracked an inch so he could hear what was going on outside.
In the week since the squadron had been grounded, the usual sounds were missing and he was agitated at the inactivity. Airfields were places where planes flew and the air was filled with the sound of aero engines. At the moment, all he had was the sound of the wind in the trees and vehicles moving around. Occasionally he heard the tramp of feet as defaulters were marched to and from their allotted tasks.
He thought about the meeting at Group the previous evening. With no knowledge of what had happened further up the chain of command, when Etheridge had been called to Group, he was expecting trouble. Amber Hill was his station, a failure reflected on him. Like the erks, he had felt the grounding order as a personal slight on his competency. He had a feeling his career was about to crash for the final time.
Etheridge had known AOC 5 Group, Jack Slessor a long time. He had been his Flight Commander on the North West Frontier in 1922. Where Slessors career had seen a steady rise, Etheridge’s own career had been far more pedestrian. A flying accident had stalled his promotion and when he emerged from hospital a year later in 1928, he found his contemporaries had skipped ahead of him. It was not until the pre-war expansion that he got his chance to rise up the ranks to Group Captain.
He was relieved when he found the other station commanders were also in attendance. Last to arrive, he had just sat down at one end of the table when Slessor came in from the door at the other end, his staff officer flanking him.
There was a knock at the door and Etheridge came back from his introspection as he called for them to come in. Asher entered and stood in front of Etheridge’s desk, coming to attention and snapping off a salute. The Group Captain acknowledged his presence with a hint of a nod and continued staring out of the window. The sky was a hard iron grey, the clouds mere streaks as the brisk wind shoved them around. There was rain there, he thought, lurking just over the horizon ready to come down.
He closed the window, thumping the latch home before sitting down at his desk. He fussily straightened some folders that offended his sense of symmetry and order and then looked at Asher. His squadron commander sat patiently, composed. Etheridge had known Asher six months, since the squadron had been formed and come to Amber Hill. He had watched him take a bunch of men and mould them into a unit. It had been a hard struggle. Few of the original crews had much experience to stiffen the ranks and provide some seasoning.
Asher had to do things the hard way, leading from the front and encouraging his flight commanders to do the same. Gradually, they had come together but Etheridge knew that Asher felt there was something lacking. They had discussed it more than once in this very office but it had been hard to define. They both knew that their aircraft played no small part in this malaise. Crews had to have confidence in their tools and at the moment, they didn’t have it. The recent spate of mishaps had unnerved the men and the only thing that was going to cure that was a good few operations under their belt.
“I hope the Rolls Royce men are being given every facility?” he asked Asher.
“Of course, sir. My instructions have been clear, but it’s not the first time they’ve been. Our lads know what to do.”
Etheridge nodded and grunted in response. Rolls Royce had been here twice already. It had felt odd, allowing a bunch of civilians onto the station, but they were there to make things better after all.
“Good. Is there any estimate on how much longer they’ll be?”
“Two more weeks I would imagine, sir. There’s a lot left to check. Pullen is giving me updates but progress is slow.”
While everyone else had it relatively easy, as the squadrons Engineering Officer, Pullen had been rushing around trying to fulfill every demand. The first task after the grounding had been to pull the Form 700’s for each aircraft and start acquainting himself with each aircrafts history before the Rolls Royce bods turned up. Since then he had been hovering in the background while they came up with snag lists and dictated what work needed to be done. After that it was a matter of coordinating the ground crews and making sure the right spares were available. Rolls Royce and Avro were ferrying in what they were short of.
“What are you doing about the crews in the meantime?”
“The usual, sir. Ground lectures, a bit of PT. Montgomery had the gunners out at the butts earlier in the week.” Etheridge nodded, he had heard the racket as the men had blazed off an indecent amount of rounds at paper targets.
Asher had toyed with some kind of escape and evasion exercise but decided not to. The last time they had done something like that,
two men had ended up in hospital after being ‘captured’ by the local territorials and trying to escape by jumping out of the moving truck. One had landed badly and broken an ankle and the other one had bounced off a fallen tree trunk and given himself concussion.
“I think in the circumstances we could hand out a few passes,” Etheridge suggested. He didn’t like the thought of mass leave, but there was little else for the crews to do. He had seen the building pressure cooker atmosphere amongst the men. If there were many more ground lectures or drills there would be rebellion. Bored aircrew made for trouble.
These men had been living on pure adrenalin and fear for the last few months, living each day as if it might be their last. This sudden halt to the normal proceedings had produced an ugly mix of pent up feelings. Two men had already been arrested for trying to get back on the airfield via the fence rather than the main gate. Only this morning a few men had been retrieved from the cells in Lincoln after overstaying their welcome in town. Asher had smoothed things over with the local Inspector but that would not always work. With so many airfields around Lincoln, the Police were robust in dealing with transgressions.
“I’ll sort something out. Considering what’s going on I’ll make most of them seventy two’s. The married men and those with further to go can have seven days.”
Unmarried himself, Asher was not so churlish that he was going to make things difficult for others. There was little enough pleasure in this life and they could all be dead tomorrow.
“As soon as we’re operational, I want us to hit the ground running,” Asher said with some conviction.
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