Night Raiders

by Richard Townsend Bickers

  When he had finished, he taxied back and went into Yardley’s office.

  “I’ve passed myself, sir!”

  “Good. Now you can get on and clear all the bumph out of my “out” tray; and attend to your own “in” tray.” He smiled half-heartedly. “I won’t take you if you haven’t cleared all your paperwork before take-off.”

  “Don’t worry, Major: my desk and my conscience will both be clear.”

  “Don’t think I can’t see through you, Tearle. This is the thin end of the wedge. One trip as my observer, and you’ll shame the SMO into passing you fit for pilot again. And I’ll be stuck with a new adjutant to break in.”

  “That’s right, sir.”

  For a moment they were both cheerful.

  *

  They were going to take the enemy by surprise in more ways than one that night.

  The 18 Handley Page O/400s were making an eight-hour trip, which meant taking off by 9 p.m. to be out of enemy air space before first light. Their target would be bombed at one o’clock in the morning.

  The DH4s, with only three and a half hours’ endurance, would have to deal with the last anti-aircraft guns, which were to the south of Fichtewald, at half-past ten; on their way out; and, if they had any bombs to drop on the marshalling yards, they would do so fifteen minutes or so later: both attacks would be much earlier than before.

  Quinn had adopted the rendezvous system which Yardley had initiated. The same searchlight would shine vertically as a beacon around which both squadrons would form up. As before, two more searchlights would beam onto them to help the crews to see one another and avoid colliding.

  The timing of takeoffs was critical. Three DH4s would go first and eventually climb to 16,000 ft. All the HPs would follow. The remaining 16 DH4s (Yardley was putting up 19 this time) would leave last.

  Beneath the top level DH4s, the HPs would be staggered at 200 ft intervals in altitude: the leading section of three at 8,000 ft and the remainder stepped down behind it. They would be half a minute behind each other. The 16 low-level DH4s would be in sections of three at separations of 100 ft and half a minute, but stepped up from front to rear.

  Yardley would lead, flying 1,000 ft above the ground, following the contours. They had to cross the Vosges, which rose to 3,000 ft. Each successive section would be stepped up to 1,500 ft above the level of the ground immediately below. By keeping as low as practicable, they would reduce bombing error. Gun sites were small targets.

  The DH4s, both top and bottom, would forge ahead of the HPs and stay five miles ahead of them to knock out the guns before the slow heavy machines reached them. For the last part of their flight, the latter would have to take their chance; but they were going to attack a part of Germany which had never been raided before and the defences en route were therefore scanty. The most heavily defended zones came in the early part of the operation.

  Quinn assembled all the crews in a hangar at last light to brief them. It did not take long. There was little that anyone could tell them, in those days, and there were no wireless frequencies, codes or procedures to lay down: there was no communication.

  He said, “Major Yardley flew into the area this morning and reported good weather with no obvious signs of change. At sixteen thousand feet, he estimated the wind at twenty-five miles an hour, westerly; and at ten thousand also westerly but only fifteen miles an hour.”

  He had had them informed of the target and the route that morning. Now he explained the forming-up procedure and gave them their height bands.

  The system of Verey light signals to indicate various emergencies, changes of plan and forced abandonment was standard and there was no need to go over it.

  “This is a unique operation,” Quinn told them; implying that he was a genius to have thought of it. He explained exactly why. With a final lift of the upper lip and a sweeping survey of the whole assembly, he said, “Good luck to you all.”

  Yardley said to Tearle, “He should have added ‘Do your best, chaps: my promotion depends on it’.”

  “I don’t think anyone needs to be told the real object of the operation: Quinn for full colonel,” Tearle replied.

  *

  Sitting in the moonlit darkness while the engine warmed up, waiting in the shuddering airframe amid the clatter of all the other engines and the reek of hot oil, both Yardley and Tearle thought of Alec Wotton and both put the thought quickly out of mind. There was room in their thoughts only for what had to be done tonight and if their concentration drifted there would be a lot more dead among the 110 airmen who were setting out to bomb Germany.

  The goosenecks flared and smoked. Two searchlights shone their beams along the surface of the aerodrome. The first three DH4s were airborne and climbing. The HPs were clambering majestically into the air one after another, flames spitting from their exhausts, their tail and wingtip lights appearing to wink when they turned on the ground or wheeled in the sky.

  Everyone who was not flying had turned out to watch the 37 machines take off. Officers and men stood in groups in front of the hangars, their voices audible in the night air as the crews walked to their aircraft, until the roar of the first engines starting up drowned them.

  There was a tingling expectancy abroad shared alike by those who were going and those who were staying behind.

  Yardley turned round for the last time to look back at Tearle and raise a hand in a friendly wave.

  “Ready to go, Harold?”

  “I’m ready, Eric.”

  “Here we go, then.”

  The speaking-tube was behaving quite well. Wait till it ices up, thought Yardley. Wish we had been able to do something about that idea of Alec’s... no time to think about that now.

  The aircraft jolted forward, he lined it up with the goosenecks on his right, reached the first of them and opened his throttle. Within a quarter of a minute they were off the ground, the machine was climbing steadily towards the vertical marker beam and he was looking up towards the navigation lights clustered above him.

  There was no need for his 16 machines to orbit the marker, as they were flying so low and had, anyway, to overtake the heavies. Three rows of goosenecks had been laid so that each section could take off simultaneously and already in formation.

  He hoped that his first three crews had got their timing right and would be approximately directly overhead ten minutes from now. Their section leader was due to fire a white Verey then and he to respond with another.

  The Handley Pages switched off their navigation lights but he could see the dark shapes of the three lowest ones as they climbed. Then they were behind him and he was checking the time on his clock.

  The Verey light burst in the sky far above and in front.

  “That’s it, Harold.”

  “I saw it. We’ll have to pedal a bit faster.”

  “They’ll have to throttle back.”

  Yardley fired his Verey cartridge and settled down at 1,000 ft and 115 m.p.h.

  It was much warmer down here than he was used to. He began to enjoy himself. And, of course, down at this level ice should not form in the speaking-tube. He had forgotten that. The realisation cheered him further. They were embarked on an operation which was making history: the first mass takeoff ever, the first time that a low-level attack was being made at night on ack-ack guns, the first time the path was being cleared for the heavy bombers to go on their way in some safety. He began to sing.

  He heard Tearle’s voice shout, on a note of protest, “Alec never warned me about this! Are you going to sing all the way?”

  “Probably, you lucky fellow.”

  “I’d like to get off here, please.”

  “Sorry. No request stops on this bus route.” Yardley was glad Tearle sounded so pleased about things too.

  The bracing wires hummed agreeably, the wind made a fluting noise through the struts, the engine growled smoothly, the air was placid. All was right with his immediate world.

  *

  They were due to
reach the first known Archie battery in five minutes. Yardley’s stomach muscles clenched and then relaxed again. Two searchlight beams suddenly jumped skyward from the dark mass of a wood he could see on his starboard. They must have heard the three top-level machines. They wavered about the upper sky. He watched the ground ahead.

  A succession of red flashes stabbed the darkness as the guns opened fire.

  “Obliging of them,” Yardley called to his observer.

  “Most helpful.”

  Looking up, they saw the shell bursts high overhead.

  “Here goes,” Yardley said.

  This was distinctly unpleasant. Although the guns were not shooting directly at them, they would have to fly over the batteries in order to bomb. Being hit by a heavy shell at 1,000 ft was not an event to contemplate with any consolation that it might just as easily miss.

  Yardley peered down through his bomb sight and in his imagination the long muzzles below were pointed directly at him. One of them fired and six feet of flame leaped from its mouth. He could hear the crash as the charge detonated and feel the blast of disturbed air created by the passage of the shell.

  Another cannon fired and the sizzling air seemed to singe the DH4. It rocked the wings violently. Yardley, teeth clenched, counteracted each rocking motion as gently as he could. The machine settled and the bars on the sight slid towards the target.

  He pulled the toggle and his first bomb fell. He banked sharply to avoid the next gun in line, watching for the burst of his bomb. It came with a flash that lit up half the battery and a moment later the machines to right and left of him had bombed and bombed again, each dropping two 112-pounders. He could see two guns tipped over and fires raging around them. Piled shells began to explode and give off sparks, dense smoke and more tall flames.

  Yardley dived and swept across again, firing his Vickers gun at the ground. In the firelight he saw men falling. He climbed and heard Tearle shooting at the gun positions in his turn.

  The other two aircraft in his section each dropped one more bomb and there were more explosions from the stacks of ammunition in each gunpit, more smoke rolled over the site and hid the guns.

  “Not bad,” Yardley shouted.

  “Pretty good show.” Tearle sounded excited.

  Yardley resumed his original height and increased his speed.

  Tearle said, “They’re both keeping station all right.”

  Yardley looked to both sides and could see the outlines of the two other DH4s quite clearly in the moonlight.

  More searchlights came on but wasted their efforts on the upper sky while Yardley and his marauders cruised on unworried.

  They flew on for ten minutes. The calm was broken by a rush of tracer fire from ahead and Spandau bullets whipped past, coming from half a dozen places.

  The sky on their right lit up and Yardley saw the machine on his starboard wreathed in flames and falling. Intelligence had not warned them of the heavy machine-guns that were guarding some evidently prized German installation. He remembered an electricity power station hereabouts. The Spandaus must have been set up there in the past few days. The DH4 which had been shot down with one bomb still on board sent up a tremendous sheet of flame when it hit the ground.

  The Spandaus kept up their fire and Yardley counted the seconds while the rest of his formation came weaving through. Nobody else was hit.

  The second gun battery lay close in front of them and again the cannon were in action, giving them an excellent aiming-point. Yardley steered towards them, once again rocking and bucking in the eddies caused by the shells. He dropped his last bomb and it fell right into one of the gunpits, his first direct hit.

  “Bull’s-eye,” shouted Tearle, excitement again sharpening his voice.

  The remaining machine in the section dropped its bomb and both machines dived to strafe the gun crews, once more well illuminated by the fires caused by ammunition and by petrol in the tanks of the parked lorries which towed the limbers.

  They left the site to the next section and Tearle presently reported, “One... two... four... six bursts, right on target.” His voice faltered and he exclaimed, “God! One of the chaps was hit by a shell.”

  Yardley twisted round and saw a shower of fiery fragments spread over the sky and fluttering earthward. But only one anti-aircraft gun was still shooting and in a moment the smoke hid the sky so that it could no longer aim. He looked anxiously up but none of the three aeroplanes at 16,000 ft had been hit.

  The third hazard was the worst they expected to encounter: two batteries, supported by searchlights, around a factory which manufactured locomotives and rolling-stock. The searchlights, this time, spread over the sky at all levels. Yardley was dazzled by a beam that settled full on his machine. A few seconds later, shells began to burst around it. He dived towards the ground, the beam lost him, but he was now partly blind after the intense glare. He turned towards the nearest light and fired at it. It went out. More beams moved towards him but he was too low for them to find him. He could hear Tearle shooting down at the lights.

  Bombs burst among the guns as the second section dropped the last of their bombs. The third section attacked, letting all their bombs go. He continued circling, diving and climbing so that he and Tearle could each in turn strafe the searchlights and guns. The fires on the ground were widespread. Machine-guns on the factory roofs flailed at the attackers. Two aircraft caught fire. A third one exploded. Yardley flew into a cloud of smoke and felt it stinging his eyes and fouling his mouth as it forced its way past his goggles and the scarf he wore across his face. He was not wearing his oxygen mask at this low altitude.

  “That’s the worst over,” Yardley called to his observer.

  There was no answer for a moment, then Tearle’s voice, distorted, reached him and he thought the speaking-tube must have been damaged.

  “Yes... yes... worst over, Eric.”

  “Are you all right, Harold?”

  “Yes... all right.” He didn’t sound it.

  “Trouble with the gun?”

  “No... gun... fine.”

  It really was about time someone invented an efficient and reliable means of speaking to one another, Yardley thought.

  The low-level sections of his squadron had been ordered to climb when they had used all their bombs and after they had helped to strafe this last target, to the same height as the top-level section. This would help to distract the enemy gunners from the low-level machines still flying between 1,000 ft and 1,500 ft above contours. Two sections still remained behind Yardley.

  The last barrier they had to cross was approaching. There was only one battery there and there were few searchlights. The guns obligingly began firing at the DH4s which were plodding along high aloft and Yardley went straight in to strafe them. Close behind, the fifth section released its bombs from 1,400 ft and dived to make a strafing run. Fire rippled all over the area: spilled petrol burning. There were more pyrotechnics from the shells stacked beside the guns. Smoke coiled everywhere and rose in thick, choking drifts to a height of 500 ft.

  “We can go home now,” Yardley said.

  He could barely hear Tearle’s reply. “Yes... go home.”

  “Harold, are you all right?”

  “Hit...” Tearle’s voice choked and faded.

  “You were hit?”

  “N-nothing... to... worry... a-about.”

  But there was plainly a lot to worry about.

  Tearle spoke again. “Eric... Fichtewald... must attack...”

  “Yes. It’s on our shortest route home.”

  “G-g-good... must... b-bomb and... and strafe.”

  “We’ll do that, old chap.”

  Much worried, Yardley fired the Verey signal to confirm return to base via Fichtewald. His last low-level section and the top section each had twelve bombs still. All his surviving crews had plenty of ammunition. They would give Fichtewald a surprise that would not soon be forgotten.

  The railway junction came in sight, rails sh
ining in the moonlight, signal lights bright, sparks coruscating at locomotives’ smokestacks.

  On came the searchlights, the guns went into action. Yardley circled the fringe of the marshalling yards, shooting at guns and lights. He could not hear Tearle firing: this was a fine time for the Lewis gun to jam. Machine-gun fire licked back at him. The last low-level machines bombed and some of the guns ceased firing.

  The orders were that after turning homeward the top-level aircraft would all rapidly lose height and the original high section would bomb from 2,000 ft. All would then join in the ground strafing.

  The last bombs fell on and around the station.

  The air was webbed with tracer fire as DH4s dived in succession, visible to each other in the brilliant moonlight, to machine-gun the guns which were still in action, the remaining searchlights and the whole area of the railway yards.

  Yardley, his anxiety about Tearle momentarily forgotten, was enjoying himself, exulting in the havoc his squadron was causing.

  Until he saw silvery bulbous shapes rising rapidly all around him and wondered why it was that Intelligence had not learned in good time that a balloon barrage had been established here.

  He fired two red Verey lights in warning to his companions to circle tightly and climb steeply to get above this new menace.

  He was hemmed in by a separate cluster of balloons which had been placed to protect the station buildings. He was having to orbit on his wingtips and could hardly make the height he needed. Machine-guns were shooting at him. He wanted to get Tearle home to the doctors as fast as he could. He would have to shoot his way out of the trap.

  He aimed for the nearest balloon and gave it a long burst. It began to burn and fall. Although the moon was strong, he had not been able to see the horizontal cables stretched between the vertical ones to which the balloons were tethered.

  Yardley felt his port wing suddenly snatched and swung round. He heard a crack as spars, struts and canvas splintered and tore. With a final burst of throttle he ripped himself clear, one wing sagging. He climbed as best he could, the port wing low, staggering crabwise away from the railway yard and into the outer comparative darkness. A bank of high cloud drifted across the moon. The aircraft was sinking. The lower port wing broke off several feet from its tip, dragging a portion of the upper wing with it