He found Saunderson, packing up Walsh’s stuff. That rooted Carter to the spot. He suddenly felt faint, his legs turned to rubber and he sank onto the corner of his bed. His mouth had gone dry and he looked at Saunderson with horror.
The Adjutant looked like a kid caught with his hand in the biscuit tin. He finished fastening the clasps on the suitcase and put it with the kitbag behind the door.
“Sorry about this,” he said, his tone abjectly apologetic. “I thought I could get this done before you got back.”
Carter was too shocked to respond at first. He licked his lips and found his voice wouldn’t work. He tried again.
“How? When?”
“Two nights ago, minelaying off the Frisians. We got the code that they’d dropped, but they never did get back.”
Carter nodded dumbly. He looked at the pile of stuff on the mattress. Saunderson followed his look.
“Spare kit. No need to send that back to his home. You might find it useful. If not, I’m sure you’ll know someone who cam make use of it.”
Saunderson held out an envelope. Carter took it, turning it over in his hand.
“He left that for you.”
Job done, Saunderson picked up the case and kit bag and left Carter to himself. The room suddenly felt very empty.
After dinner, Fish Salmon asked to see him. Feeling a little bleak, Carter ambled along to his Flight commanders office. Not standing on ceremony, Salmon pointed to the seat in front of his desk. Carter sat down and took the offered cigarette. He tucked it behind his ear to save it for later.
“Good leave?” asked Salmon briskly. Carter noticed he looked tired. Dark rings were under his eyes.
“Pretty good,” Carter replied. “A week off was just the fillip I needed.”
Salmon nodded grimly.
“Good, because we’re right back in it. We’ve got to work up with the Lancs as quick as we can. A few bods have come over from 44 at Waddington to give us some tips, but we’ll have to work it out as we go along. We’re keeping some of our Manchester’s for now in case Group want a job laid on but we’re off ops for the time being.” He handed over a book to Carter. “Pilot’s notes. Get reading and you can see your new kite tomorrow. You can meet your new crew then as well. You’re getting a Flight Engineer and a dedicated Bomb Aimer.”
“So we’ll have a crew of eight?” Carter asked, making sure he did his arithmetic right.
“Seven,” corrected Salmon. “The Lancs don’t have a second pilot, but you needn’t worry, Jensen’s been awarded a commission. He’ll be going off on a course tomorrow.”
“Good for him,” Carter said, genuinely pleased for him.
“I’m glad you agree. I think it’s well deserved. Get weaving, it’s good to have you back.” He held out his hand and Carter shook it, surprised at Salmon’s warmth.
That night they went into Lincoln to give Jensen a proper send off. Carter lost count of the number of pubs they went to. They spent some time at The Tarleton on Portland Street. It got a bit blurry after that. Carter had no idea how they got back to Amber Hill let alone get to bed.
They gathered under the nose of their new bomber the next day looking decidedly the worse for wear. This was the third time they had looked over a new aircraft, it was getting stale.
A pilot from 44 was waiting for them. To all outward appearances, the Lancaster was a Manchester with a few tweaks. The wingspan had been stretched to over one hundred feet. There was no third fin on the fuselage and four Merlin engines hung in pods under the wings. There would be no more Vultures to worry about.
They got aboard. As similar to a Manchester as you could get, there were still technical differences. There was not one station on the Lancaster that didn’t have changes.
Both Murphy and Todd had new turrets. Happiest of all was Murphy, who had come to hate the cramped conditions of the Botha mid upper turret on the Manchester. In the tail, Todd had the FN20 turret and four .303 machine guns as per the FN5, but he had a bit more room to move around in.
In the cockpit, there were the extra throttles and starters and extinguishers for the four Merlin engines. Gone were the second set of flying controls. Instead, there was a new panel on the right for the Flight Engineer. Vos had a few new tweaks to his radio equipment. Woods was the only place untouched, but there were rumours some new navigational aids were coming.
When they got back, they gathered at the tail, well pleased with their new mount. Once again she sported an L on the side behind the squadron codes.
“Could we have a name on this one, skipper?” asked Todd.
“London III?” Carter suggested after some thought.
“London’s a bit of a dive,” commented Murphy. “Can’t it be something else?”
“Such as?” asked Carter.
“Something a bit more lively would be good,” said Woods.
The two new men stayed out of this conversation. Carter twisted his face. As a rule, he didn’t like painting nose art on his kites. He never had on his Hampden’s throughout his first tour and he wasn’t keen on the idea now.
“If we’re going to have something, then the name needs to suit the letter,” he said.
“I don’t care, as long as its got curves in the right places,” said Todd with a leer.
“Keep it relatively clean gents, no nudes,” Carter corrected. As skipper, he was going to have the casting vote anyway, but even so, he didn’t want to stifle them too much.
“How about L for Lady?” offered Vos.
That was perfect and they agreed. Two days later, she sported a rendition of a reclining female in a red chemise and stockings above flowing script on the left side of the nose. She was now ‘The Lady’.
They buckled down to the conversion training with gusto. After the first flight, the crews mood was sky high. Here was the aircraft that would get them through the rest of their tour. As much as L-London had been reasonably well behaved, Carter found he was far more relaxed in The Lady. He had four tried and tested Merlins, reserve power and no fear that an engine might burst into flames without warning.
The final proof came when he had Byron, their new Flight Engineer, cut both port engines on one of their flights. He advanced the throttles on the starboard engines and the Lancaster stayed up with not a hint of a problem.
When Carter threw her into a corkscrew, it was like flying a fighter in comparison to the Manchester. The controls were much lighter, particularly in the climb and the Lanc flew with poise and precision.
The new crew members settled in. Their Flight Engineer Byron was young, dark haired and serious. A failed pilot, he’d been desperate to stay on as aircrew, so he’d retrained to whatever he could get. Carter couldn’t care less about that, the fact Byron had twenty hours of stick time was what mattered, it was some insurance in case of difficulties. He started giving Byron some instruction and he soon had confidence, that in the event he was ever hit, the Engineer could at least take the controls and hold it level long enough for the crew to bail out.
The Bomb Aimer, a Flight Sergeant called Colin Flynn, was tall, athletic and by his own account, a ladykiller. He insisted on being called Errol and clearly modelled himself on the movie star, right down to the pencil moustache. He and Murphy became firm friends. More importantly, he was also a pretty good bomb aimer. He proved that over the sands at Wainfleet, dumping practice bomb after practice bomb on the target from sixteen, seventeen and eighteen thousand feet.
During their conversation training, Woods moved in with Carter. He brought his stuff over and filled the gaping hole that had been left by Walsh’s loss. The big Canadian also acquired a dog. One of the other navigators had grown tired of going out for walks in the cold and wet so Woods took him on. A blonde Labrador called Merlin, it was a gorgeous dog if a little on the tubby side.
Carter balked at the idea of having an animal share their room. It was big and there was something about the smell of damp dog that his nose found objectionable, but once he saw the
big eyes and trusting face he couldn’t bring himself to say no so Merlin stayed. Officially he slept in the corner, but most nights he ended up on Woods bed, a big yellow furry hot water bottle. Woods wished he ‘d thought of this during the winter when it was cold.
A week later, Carter encountered another problem. On a fighter familiarisation exercise, he had been throwing the Lancaster around with gusto to see how far he could push it. On one corkscrew he went through a really steep climbing turn to port, cutting across the diving fighters approach. As it broke off the attack, Carter reversed the turn and dumped the nose, diving to starboard. He let the altimeter unwind. At five thousand feet, he hauled back on the yoke and there was an abrupt shudder through the airframe.
He levelled off immediately and got the crew to call in and check for any damage. Murphy told him to look at the wings. Carter looked left and saw a ragged edge of metal where the wingtip was missing but Murphy wasn’t referring to that one, he was looking at the other one.
Byron looked out of the canopy to the right. The last few feet of the wingtip was vertical and fluttering in the slipstream. Carter glanced right and blanched. With the wingtip gone he might lose an aileron. With the tip bent, it might nip the aileron and jam it in position. Either way, they were in trouble.
Woods gave him a straight course for home. Gingerly, they made the turn with a combination of rudder and manipulating the throttles. A few miles from home, the starboard wingtip fluttered one last time and then finally tore away. Carter kept the movements small and made a beautiful landing to stop anything else from falling off.
To have a failure like that on a new aircraft drew attention. Pullen was good enough to doubt his word, the Group Engineering Officer went one step further than that and accused Carter of stunting and low flying and trying to talk his way out of it when it had all gone wrong. Such a brazen accusation pissed Carter off and he stuck to his guns.
Saunderson made a few phone calls to some local schools and passed the word that a bit of aircraft was missing. The first to find it could claim a reward of ten shillings. There the matter lay for a few days until one of the missing wingtips turned up. Two boys had found it inside a hedgerow and taken it to class.
Maps were consulted and the location jibed with Carters track back to Amber Hill. There had been no reports of low flying aircraft in the area that day so Carter was grudgingly taken at his word.
Of course, this then begged the question of what had actually happened. The Group Engineering Officer changed tack and accused Carter of deliberately over stressing the airframe. At this point, Church stepped in and backed his man. Stunting at low level was against the rules, everyone knew that, but he wasn’t about to have his pilots accused of bad flying by a pencil pusher.
An Anson flew in with some Avro staff from Ringway. While they looked at The Lady in the hangar, the Anson’s pilot went looking for Carter. He found him stewing in his billet.
“Can I come in?” he asked.
Carter brightened at the interruption. He recognised Andrews and gestured to Woods bed opposite. Merlin looked up for a moment, looking at the visitor before going back to snoozing in his basket.
“Hello again. I asked around where you might be.”
“Better be careful,” said Carter. “It might be difficult being seen with a line shooter.”
Andrews cocked his head to one side and gave Carter a shrewd look.
“Is that what it is?”
“No, of course not!” Carter snapped back, temperature rising. It took a moment for him to reign himself back in. “Group just pisses me off.” Andrews nodded knowingly. He knew how the service could be. He was ex RAF himself and during the 1930’s, transgressions were jumped on with little mercy.
“Take a walk?” Andrews suggested. Carter nodded and made for the door.
“Why not? Nothing else to do at the moment.”
They headed to the peri track, Merlin tagging along behind. The remaining Manchester’s were at dispersal and Andrews took a stroll around. He kicked one of the mainwheels and then leaned against it, hands shoved in the pockets of his white flying suit. Merlin christened the tail wheel then went sniffing the grass, looking for rabbits.
“How are you finding the Lanc?” Andrews asked him.
“Marvellous. She flies beautifully,” Carter said with enthusiasm. “When bits aren’t falling off that is,” he finished, his tone sarcastic.
“You still stand by that?” enquired Andrews.
Carter felt insulted that his word was being questioned but he kept his temper under control. He stuck his chin out.
“I do.”
Andrews nodded and folded his arms. He looked off to his left, staring at the horizon as he chewed on a blade of grass.
“I don’t think I can stress to you just how much efforts gone into the Lanc.” They watched a Lancaster drone overhead in the circuit. It came in, flaps down, floating along the glide path before touching down with a screech of rubber. “If this was just fun and games gone wrong,” Andrews continued, “it goes no further after today. Production will press on. If you say it’s right…” He left the out hanging there to be grabbed with both hands.
“It happened,” Carter said with hard certainty.
Andrews gave him a very long, appraising stare. The silence dragged out. Finally, he pushed off from the big mainwheel and clapped Carter on the shoulder.
“Fair enough.”
They walked back towards the main part of the airfield. They said their goodbyes when Andrews headed to the hangars. The Avro staff left that evening, taking the wingtip and the remains of the mountings with them. The Lady was fitted with new wingtips and a test flight was scheduled for the following morning. Nothing was said, but Carter knew they thought it was his fault.
The following day, word reached them that another Lanc lost its port wingtip over at Waddington. It was recovered and comparisons were made with that and the one recovered from Carter’s Lancaster. A week later, it was decided it had been a faulty batch of mountings that attached the wingtips to the rest of the wing. Carter felt vindicated, but it had left a bad taste in his mouth.
43 - New Lease
Carter stamped into the hut and shrugged off his greatcoat. Woods was sat at the table writing a letter home.
“Where you been?” he asked.
“Got snagged for something didn’t I?” Carter answered, his irritation evident. Woods shrugged and turned back to his letter, wondering how he was going to tell his parents about Yvonne. While everyone else had shot off hither and tither on leave, Woods had stayed at Amber Hill and finally made his move.
He had caught her coming out of Intel when her hands were full with folders. Ever gallant, he offered to help carry them for her and she let him. They talked all the way to the briefing room and arranged to meet at the cinema that evening. He suddenly wondered what he had been so worried about all those weeks.
Since then they had been almost inseparable, spending their time off the station. The only person who knew was Carter and even he’d only found out the week before. He had seen them walking hand in hand late one night when Woods was walking her back to the WAAFery on the far side of the station.
Carter had buttonholed him when he got back to their room. At first, Woods had tried to bluff it out, but when Carter told him he had seen them, he folded and told him. Putting it down on paper just made it seem more real somehow. He also mentioned the coming squadron dance and the fuss over the squadron photograph that had been taken that lunchtime.
After nearly three weeks of work ups and training, the squadron was going back on ops, but before that, there was one last chance for a party. With no ops on, a definite date had been penciled in and Saunderson had spent the last week making arrangements. Invites had gone out and the men had spent the day making themselves presentable.
Seeing as they were sprucing themselves up for the evenings entertainment, Church took the opportunity to do a squadron photograph. He’d had them parade out
side the main hangar in their best blue, with their trousers pressed, their shirts stiff and their shoes bulled. In front of the hangar a Lanc had been drawn up on the pan with a row of chairs in front of it. Aside from the station photographer, there was one from Group, a few people from the press and a Pathé news crew.
Everyone had suddenly felt like celebrities and put on their best faces. It took about twenty minutes to get the photos. They could have done it in half the time but there was the usual horseplay and pushing and shoving. It felt like posing for the school photograph.
The Pathé crew took some footage of the lineup, with Church, Everett, Salmon, Etheridge and the squadron ground staff sat on chairs in the middle. They shot some more film afterwards of the crews milling around, having a chat and a smoke until they were released.
Woods looked up from his letter when he saw Carter get out of his best blue, pull on his long johns and put on his beat up battledress and scruffy pants.
“Need a favour Woody,” he asked shortly. Woods set his letter aside.
“Name it.”
“Get your warm gear on, you’ll love it.”
Carter had been about to head off in his car when he was summoned to see the CO. He was going to pick up Georgette to bring her to the dance but he thought he’d go early to see Helen at The Madison. She was due any day so Carter was sure she might want some company after being cooped up at the hotel.
He’d smelt a rat when he saw there was a full house waiting for him in Church’s office. Etheridge was sat behind the CO’s desk with Church hovering by his right shoulder like some metaphorical pirate’s parrot. Salmon had stood in the corner, arms folded, his backside perched on the windowsill.
The Group Captain was all smiles in his best bib and tucker, his breast sporting the usual rows of medal ribbons below faded pilot wings. His hands were clasped on top of the desk, the four broad rings visible on each cuff.
Maximum Effort Page 50
