The first burst from the 110 took Vos in the back and tore through his stomach. He collapsed in a heap with a shocked look on his face. He had just enough time to register the pain before he died.
Todd adjusted deflection and carried on firing, giving as good as he got. The four .303’s flashed as round after round spat out of the guns at the 110 as it rolled right. He traversed right and was still firing when the world came apart around him. Perspex splintered and there was a sharp pain in his arm that jerked his hand off the controls.
Up front, Carter felt the vibrations as the tail turret opened fire but there was little he could do in the way of evading action. The controls were so mushy, he thought if he tried anything drastic they would fall out of the sky. He shoved the throttles forward to get more power. He could feel the tugs as they were hit and he did his best to stop the wing flicking over as he turned left. The rudder pedals juddered as more hits went in and then the yoke was snatched out of his hand and the nose went down.
The stricken Lancaster dropped like a pebble down a well, engines roaring. The dive steepened and Carter gingerly pulled back on the yoke, convinced it would come away in his hand like some stupid cartoon film. A solid wall of air came in from the nose and took his breathe away, a hurricane that ripped and tore at him. They continued to dive, and Carter railed against his fate. It wasn’t supposed to end like this.
“Come on you, bitch!” he shouted. “Up! UPPPP!”
He closed the throttles and fed in some trim again. His teeth rattled in his head as the bomber shook and vibrated. The gale battered Carter and he shivered as he leaned over the yoke. They continued down and he shot a glance at the airspeed indicator. The gauge must have been broken because the needle showed them going over three hundred miles an hour. If they carried on diving like this, it would be even money the wings ripped off before they hit the ground.
Carter closed his eyes and prayed. He closed the throttles and then pushed the yoke forward and pulled back again, trying to coax something out of the elevators. Unbelievably, the nose began to come up, inch by miserable inch. Shuddering, vibrating fit to the bust, the Lancaster eventually bottomed out of the dive at about a thousand feet.
When they levelled off, Byron went forward to find out what was going on in the nose. He expected to see a hole in the blister and what was left of Flynn smeared all over the place. What he found instead was an empty space. There was a hole in the floor where the escape hatch had been and Flynn was nowhere to be seen. Panicked by the dive, he had clipped on his parachute and slithered out of the hatch while there was still height to do so. Byron went back to the cockpit to report.
“Flynn’s gone,” he told Carter.
“What do you mean he’s gone?”
“Gone. Bailed out. Jumped.”
“The daft bugger,” said Carter through gritted teeth as he fought the controls. “You stay with me and try and sort the R/T out. Get Woods to go and find out what’s going on back there.”
Woods clambered over the spar shining a torch. He found Murphy and Vos slumped on the floor. It looked like a slaughterhouse. One glance at Vos was enough to know there was nothing he could do for him. The Belgian lay on his side, eyes wide open, staring off into the distance, blood puddle underneath him. Woods knelt down next to him and closed his eyes.
He moved onto Murphy. Blood was splashed all over his clothes and it took a few minutes of checking before he was sure there were no holes in him. The only thing he found was a cut to his left cheek. Woods tried to find a pulse, but his hands were shaking so much, he couldn’t tell if it was his or Murphy’s. He was warm to the touch though, so he propped him up against the main spar.
Woods moved gingerly down the fuselage. There were a number of holes punched in the starboard side but that was nothing in comparison to the ripped open skin on the port side. When he got to the mid upper turret, he pulled himself up inside it and had a look. The guns were pointing skywards and there were gaping holes in the perspex.
He carried on, shining the torch to find his way. One of the long trays that fed the rear turret was broken and loose cartridges of ammunition rolled around, swimming in liquid from the Elsan chemical toilet.
He crawled over the tail to the rear turret. It moved slowly from left to right and he breathed a sigh of relief. He opened the doors to the back of the turret and Todd jumped in shock. His eyes were wide behind his goggles as he stared at Woods like he was some apparition. Woods clapped him on the shoulder and gripped him hard.
“Murphy’s caught a packet and the R/T’s out!” he shouted. “So you’re it.”
Todd bobbed his head in understanding. Woods closed the turret doors and went forward again. He took his time, shuffling slowly and keeping well away from the port side.
Back in his turret, Todd took stock. The perspex to his left was smashed, and the slipstream whipped around him but the turret still worked as did his guns. His arm stung like hell but there was no point mentioning anything now. He had to man the turret and with Murphy gone he was their sole defence. He opened a first aid kit and shoved some bandages inside his flying gear, pressing it on the wound to staunch the bleeding.
As they soldiered on, Carter’s head was ringing from the constant barrage. The engines roared, the air shrieked through the nose and the holes in the canopy. His scalp felt tight, like he’d had one drink too many. His eyes were two hot ball bearings in his skull and his face was frozen into a rigid block. He thanked god he had goggles on or it would have been impossible to see anything.
Woods reappeared at his shoulder.
“Do you want the good news, or the bad news?” his navigator bellowed.
“What the hell; in for a penny…good news.”
“Todd isn’t dead and he’s still playing tail end charley.”
There was a pause and Carter waited for the next bit, there wasn’t one.
“That’s it?”
Woods decided there was no way to soften the blow so he just came out with it.
“Vos is dead. I’m not sure about, Murphy. I’ve made him comfortable but his turret is U/S.”
Carter’s jaw tensed. Flynn gone, Vos dead and Murphy injured. Not a very good scorecard.
“Do you know why we’re wallowing around?” he asked.
“Flak’s burst open the fuselage down the port side and I don’t mean a small hole. It’s like leaving the front door open when a hurricanes blowing. There’s all sorts flapping around back there.”
“Christ,” Carter cursed.
“Oh, and I’ve got no charts,” Woods finished. “They’ve all got sucked away god knows where. Apart from that, we’re fine,” he said, beaming maniacally.
“Super.”
Carter faced a dilemma. The engines were untouched and now they were on their way home they could get some altitude in case they needed to bail out. But the higher they went, the more likely fighters or flak might take a shot at them. With no R/T they were in a real jam.
He decided to stay low and trust to luck. Out of the stream, they might attract less attention. If it all went wrong, he would just have to put her down fast and dirty any way he could.
Woods gave Carter the course for home off the top of his head and went back to Murphy to keep an eye on him. Twenty minutes later, the R/T crackled into life.
“Excellent, well done, Byron.”
“Piece of cake, skip,” replied the Engineer. He kept himself busy, doing his best to ignore the raging gale twisting down the fuselage.
“Todd, how’re you doing back there?”
Todd’s reply sounded like he was at the bottom of a well, but at least they could talk to him again.
“I’m in rough shape, boss, but I’m still here.”
“Keep an eye out, we’re not home yet.”
“Remind me why I extended my tour again?” said the Australian and Carter had to laugh at the situation they were in.
They were crawling along, barely above stalling speed. Due to the missing nose h
atch and the hole in the side, they were about as aerodynamic as a barn door. A long way from home, in a crippled bomber, it was a good two hours or more to get back to Amber Hill. Carter decided there was no way they were hanging on to get home. Granted, it would be bravado and sheer bloody mindedness to get back, but it would be a stupid risk. With Murphy injured and The Lady shot to bits, Carter was going to put down on the first airfield they came across as soon as they crossed the south coast.
With no maps, it might have been difficult getting home but in this instance, it was just parallel to the way in. The only bit of the route he was concerned about was when they went past Saint Trond. There was a nightfighter field there. God help them if a fighter found them then.
Carter dropped down to five hundred feet for a while, trying to blend into the background. Overhead, he saw a bright streamer of flame as another bomber went down. Then the sky flickered on the horizon with beams of searchlights going back and forth. Carter drifted starboard to try and skirt round it.
The village of Hasselen was a sleepy Belgian village west of Sint Truiden. It had a mill, a bakery, a cobblers and a small church. Nothing much happened there until the Germans came. A supply depot was built on the big field next to the mill and a German detachment moved in, building wooden huts to house the men. Trucks regularly came and went carrying supplies and life settled down into its new pattern. The bakery provided bread to the barracks, the cobblers did a roaring trade fixing worn out jackboots.
When the British started making intruder raids on the continent, someone decided a supply depot would make a tempting target for fast low flying bombers so a flak detachment was moved into the village. It wasn’t much, just some 3.7cm mounts but enough to scare off any Blenheim or Boston that wanted to chance their arm. Tonight, the flak gunners had been roused out of bed and they had manned their guns, staring up at the sky while they heard the drone of one thousand bombers going south east. They heard them coming back not long afterwards.
They were bored and just about to go back to bed when the Feldwebel in charge of the gun to the south of the depot heard the deep rumble of aero engines coming towards them. He perked up immediately and had his single barrelled gun traversed to face the sound. He peered over the parapet of the gun emplacement and cocked his ear, listening.
The bomber was on them before they knew it. They lost precious seconds getting over the shock of something so big being so low before they opened fire. It snarled overhead, almost brushing over the trees. They loosed off eight rounds into the night sky and before the loader could insert a new clip, the bomber was gone.
One shell hit the port inner in the radiator, another hit the bomb bay doors and exploded sending splinters lancing upwards. Carter screamed as shrapnel ripped into his left arm and nicked his thigh. The controls jerked and he caught the Lancaster before she nosed in. He advanced the throttles and clawed for height.
Just like that, they were out of range but the damage had been done. Carter held onto the yoke with his right hand. His left hand was numb, the blood dripping down his arm.
“Byron!” he shouted. The Flight Engineer came over. “Help me,” Carter said through gritted teeth. Byron grabbed the yoke with one hand and helped Carter keep it back. Between the two of them they kept the Lancaster level but Carter found it difficult to concentrate as the pain crashed over him in waves.
He glanced down and winced. His leather jacket had been ripped open and a piece of shrapnel had torn through his bicep and into his shoulder deltoid muscle. Another bit of metal had torn across the top of his hand. He tried moving his fingers but it was difficult, they didn’t want to do what they were told.
Byron got a first aid kit and squeezed behind the pilots seat and tended to Carter’s arm. He wadded up a bandage and held it in place with another one. All it did was slow down the bleeding. It was crude, but there wasn’t much he could do. The wound was too far up his arm to put a tourniquet on and he didn’t want to give Carter any morphine because he wouldn’t be able to fly.
Carter used his teeth to hold one end of another bandage while Byron wrapped it around his palm.
“That okay, skipper?” Byron asked as he tied it off.
“Would it make a difference if I said no?”
“I guess not. What do you want me to do?”
“If you can handle the throttles and help with the stick.”
“Will do, boss.”
They carried on, somehow managing between them to keep The Lady in the air. The Lancaster undulated up and down, never holding level for more than a few seconds at a time. Chilled to the bone, Carter found it hard to concentrate for long as his mind began to drift. It was like being tired on a Sunday afternoon after a big roast dinner. Your head started going, your eyes closed for a second and then your head dropped and you jerked awake, your senses focusing for a moment before you started to drift again.
Byron steadied the yoke, getting the hang of anticipating Carter’s movements as they both fought the wounded bomber. Woods came forward.
“I think, Murphy’s had it. There’s not a mark on him but I can’t find a pulse and he’s going cold.”
“I’m going cold,” said Byron.
“I think the blast did for him,” said Woods.
“Poor sod,” said Carter, shaking his head, his voice slurred. “At least it was quick.” He closed one eye and focused on the compass. “How long to home?”
Woods glanced at the instrument panel.
“At this speed? Hour and a half, maybe more.”
“I won’t last that,” said Carter.
“Forty minutes to get across the channel then.”
“That’ll do,”
Todd warned them there was a stream of something trailing back from the starboard wing. Byron checked the fuel tank gauges on his engineers panels and thought they were leaking fuel from the one of the starboard tanks. They ignored it. So close to home there couldn’t have been much left anyway.
The temperature started to climb on the port inner. They debated shutting it down.
“Can we fly on two like this?” Woods asked, genuinely concerned. In their old Manchester they would have had no chance at this height.
“Piece of cake,” said Carter, half smiling. He felt light headed and he was blinking rapidly, trying to stay focused. Byron suggested restarting the starboard outer but Carter said he would rather wait. The port inner was still running even if it was a bit hot.
They steered around Antwerp. At this height, the towns flak gunners would have gobbled them up in seconds. They roared over the dykes and out over the Schelde estuary. Carter took them low. A searchlight flicked on but they left it far behind while their slipstream stirred up the surface of the water. Once they cleared the coast they went back up to five hundred feet.
This was the worst part of the entire trip. They listened to the engines and watched the gauges. The slightest twitch of the needles gave them kittens as they expected the engines to conk out at any moment. None of them relished ditching in the black forbidding waters, remembering their landing in the pond.
They crossed the coast just south of Felixstowe and Harwich, threading delicately between the port and Colchester. Their eyes went in a thousand directions at once, keeping a keen lookout for barrage balloons.
Woods took them north and within a few minutes they were over RAF Wattisham. At one thousand feet, Carter circled once to get the lay of the land. Wattisham was a day bomber field, home to Blenheims from 2 Group. There were two runways and to the east of them were the airfields buildings, four type C hangars and the usual cluster of Nissen huts. Carter was grateful that the surrounding land was quite flat as he circled north to setup for the approach. In their condition he wanted a straight run in with no hills to worry about.
“Do you want to try the wheels?” asked Byron.
Carter thought about that. Most of the damage was to the rear so it was a good chance the undercarriage was alright. He didn’t relish the idea of coming in on t
heir belly.
“We’ll give it a go. Give me some flap to see if we’ve got any hydraulic pressure. We can always blow the wheels down if we have to.”
Byron set for fifteen degrees of flap and Carter could feel them bite into the air as they came down. The nose lifted slightly and Carter left the trim alone, using what little elevator authority he had to keep them level.
He had trouble focusing on the instruments and he shook his head to clear it as his vision swam. He asked Byron to call out their altitude as they descended. They dropped the wheels and Carter felt the thump as they extended and locked home. The Lancaster staggered over the boundary fence. Carter kept the speed up in case they had to go round again.
“We’re high, we’re too high, skipper,” Byron shouted.
Carter made no reply and Byron shot him a look. Carter’s head lolled, his eyes almost rolling into the back of his head.
“Skipper!” Byron shouted. The voice came from far away, echoing in his head. Carter suddenly snapped forward, eyes wide, his brow knotted as he concentrated on these last few seconds. His vision swam, going light and dark.
He tightened his grip on the yoke with both hands, but his left hand refused to work and he hissed as pain shot up his arm. He told Byron to close the throttles. Byron edged them back, hearing the engine note dip.
The ground rushed up to meet them. The Lady thumped down once, twice to a squeal of rubber and then stayed down, squashing on her wheels.
“We’re down! Cut the switches,” said Carter, his senses swimming. His hands went slack on the controls and Byron pulled back on the yoke to keep the tail down. The engines cut and the sudden silence was almost deafening after five hours in the air.
As their speed dropped off, Byron stretched his leg over to push on the right rudder pedal to steer off the runway. They bumped across the grass and finally came to a stop.
“We made it, skipper!” shouted Byron.
“That’s good,” Carter whispered, so quiet they almost missed it. “Think I’ll sleep for a while.” His voice trailed off as his chin rested on his chest.
Maximum Effort Page 66
