Bombs Gone

by Richard Townsend Bickers

  He didn’t. Partly because she gave him no encouragement and partly because he felt too shy and too nervous about annoying her.

  The group-captain was home when they got in, and cordial enough with him; but he stayed only five minutes: long enough to accept an invitation to dinner three nights later.

  *

  Reinert climbed out of his aeroplane and looked around for something to kick, to relieve his feelings.

  Some of the troops had been booting a football about while awaiting the fighters’ return. It was lying near his aircraft and he ran the few paces and gave it a hefty kick. “I know how you feel,” said Lent. “If the Navy had held their fire, we’d have had a real pigeon-shoot while the Wellingtons had to fly straight and level on their bombing runs. Why the hell can’t someone co-ordinate these things?”

  “I bet the Staffelkapitän is fuming. He’ll have strong words to say about it to the Gruppen Kommandeur, you may be sure.”

  “Too late,” Lent said glumly. “God! It would have been so easy if the ships had only left it all to us.”

  “It’s not too late.” Reinert remembered that he was an officer and there was a limit to the extent to which he could gossip with a junior N.C.O.: even though their lives were in each other’s hands every day. “It will encourage the Tommies. They’ll be back soon. And we’ll be waiting for them with different tactics.”

  “If you say so, Herr Leutnant.”

  Ebeling, scowling and tousle-haired, joined them. His gunner and Lent, mumbling bad-temperedly together, followed their pilots towards the crew hut.

  “Even you didn’t bag one today, Werner,” Ebeling said.

  “Thanks for the “even”! Why there’s no upper gun on the Wellingtons, I’ll never understand. And no beam gun: the Tommies must have a death wish.”

  “I don’t suppose the poor devils who have to fly them have any more of a death wish than you or I. It’s the chairborne warriors who decide whether flyers live or die, and thank God ... or, I should say, the Führer ... that our aircraft are so superior to theirs. Flying alongside the Wellingtons where their guns can’t train on us, and knocking them down one after another, is like treading on beetles. A disgusting business. It makes me feel almost degraded.” He gave a short, dry laugh. “But not doing it makes me feel even worse.”

  “Me too. At least when one shoots down a Hampden, or a Blenheim or a Whitley, that can protect its beam, one feels a sense of achievement.”

  “Still, the combined fire from those Wellingtons was pretty effective, just the same.”

  “Hell, yes. I’m not feeling sorry for them ... I’m angry they all got away ... all but one.”

  Later, Ebeling asked his friend, with his habitual grinning innuendo, “Seeing Lotte tonight, or coming out with the boys?”

  “As a matter of fact, I can’t see her: they’re entertaining relatives to dinner and she has to be “on parade”.” Reinert paused momentarily in reflection, then added somewhat hastily, “Keep this under your hat for the time being, but I’m hoping to get engaged.”

  “What?” Ebeling exaggerated his astonishment. “That’s carrying things a bit far, isn’t it? You’re surely not thinking seriously of marrying?”

  Huffily, Reinert said, “Not for the time being. We’ll wait until the spring ... or early summer ... Lotte wants a May wedding.”

  “You can’t be serious. May ten years from now would be more like it. Why tie yourself down so young?”

  More amiably, Reinert replied, “If you had been lucky enough to meet a girl like Lotte, you’d understand.”

  “Have her parents given their consent?”

  “She’s telling her mother today. I’m going to telephone when we go off duty, to find out how Frau Wiggers took it. If it is all right, I’ll write to her father.”

  “Rather you than me. I’d be terrified of him as a father-in-law.” Then, as though a thought had just struck him: “Hey! He’s not going to be pleased by the risk of his daughter becoming a young widow. What if he pulls strings to get you a cushy Staff job! You would hate that. Or any non-combat flying job.”

  “No chance of that. The old boy is a fire-eater, as you know. On the contrary, he’ll be just as keen for me to stay in the front line as I am. Besides, pilots as young as us are never given the cushy jobs.”

  “I suppose you’re right. Well, perhaps Lotte’s parents will not agree to an engagement; and you can hang on to your freedom.” Another broad smile from Ebeling.

  Reinert punched him on the arm. “Damn it, Hans, I don’t want what you call my “freedom”. All I want is Lotte.”

  *

  Fog was dictating the activities of the British bombers. Crews sprawled around their rest rooms disconsolately, smoking too much, drinking too much undelicious tea and coffee, ragging mildly, peering out of the windows for some sign of an improvement in the visibility.

  Intelligence officers gave talks on aircraft recognition, displayed models of German aircraft, showed photographs and silhouettes of different portions of friendly and enemy aircraft and invited guesses about their type.

  Cpl Pyne said, “This is a bind. Never happened in the old days. Before we was made permanent aircrew, we got on with our ground trades.”

  “Yeah, ’s right,” agreed Noakes. “I’d go out now and lend the boys a hand, but they don’t need me; they’re over strength with engine fitters. I miss it, really. I like working on engines.”

  “Same here,” said Redfern. “But we’ve got more riggers on the squadron than Chiefy knows what to do with.” He got up and took his dog out for another walk along the perimeter track as far as the nearest gun-pit and back. At intervals around the airfield, in holes surrounded by sandbags, or on sandbagged mounds, ground gunners, the humblest of the humble, aircraft hands, general duties, the ACH/GDs who did every thankless job from lavatory-cleaning to station defence, manned the anti-aircraft weapons. Standing about, blue with cold and snuffling in the damp, they were glad to see a different face and to make a fuss of a dog.

  Their weapons were varied and some of them less than formidable. The least were the Lewis guns, leftovers from the last war, mounted in pairs and of little effect against modern aircraft. More useful were the Vickers machine-guns, also of Great War pattern but with a withering firepower.

  There was one monster known jeeringly as a cow gun: C.O.W. standing for Coventry Ordnance Works. This one was alleged to have been commandeered from a museum and nobody looked forward to firing it. The shell was of about three-inch calibre and to date had been used only for loading practice.

  The two most effective guns were 30mm Bofors, but nobody had yet fired those either.

  The gun-crews who manned the gun-pits were in greater danger from the guns of strafing German bombers than the enemy were from their bullets and shells.

  Stan Redfern walked miles along the perimeter track on non-flying days, always hoping that he and his dog would come across an adventurous rabbit.

  Ray Noakes sometimes accompanied him, to stretch his legs and do his bit to keep limber for the occasional Wednesday afternoon when there was no fog and the crew had been released from standing by to fly, and he could get a game of rugger.

  Vic Pyne played cards and daydreamed about his W.A.A.F. store-basher.

  On nights when the weather was clear and there was a moon, the squadrons practised instrument flying: the observers navigating from point to point around the British Isles, the pilots relying entirely on their instruments, the air-gunners cold and bored, the wireless-operators alleviating their boredom by sending an occasional practice message.

  On clear days when there was no operation to fly, there was competition among the pilots to get their hands on an aircraft to air-test. With so many more pilots than aeroplanes, part of the day had to be spent doing circuits and bumps, orbiting the airfield, landing and taking off again. This gave them all a chance to keep their hands and eyes in.

  Britain was in the grip of a patriotic fervour that electrified th
e atmosphere, excited the entire populace, made people more friendly than they had ever been: and, paradoxically, more cheerful, albeit with a kind of “we’re all in this predicament together” spirit that had a certain wry desperation as well as confidence about it. This could be felt in London and all the big cities, where men and women were rushing to abandon boring jobs and join one of the services. The lures were the promise of adventure, the knowledge that they would be doing something vitally useful to everyone’s survival, the glamour of showing off a uniform. Theatres, cinemas, dance-halls, night-clubs, pubs and restaurants were crowded.

  But on R.A.F. stations where fighter pilots were on duty before dawn to await enemy bombers that did not come, and bomber crews waited for the chance to attack Germany, there was precious little glamour or even interest in their routine. The sky was generally grey and so was the monotony of inactivity.

  Six

  The day dawned clear, except for a ground mist that a rarely-seen sun soon dissipated.

  Ridley woke to his batman’s usual lugubrious salutation, but as soon as Overton had drawn the curtains and sunlight struck through the window he reached for his cup of tea with a light-heartedness he had not known for a week.

  “Decent flying weather at last, for a change,” he exclaimed.

  “Won’t last, sir,” Overton assured him, going off with his buttons to polish and shoes to shine.

  There was both literal and figurative sunshine in Ridley’s life that morning. First, he had the certainty of some hours’ flying; with luck, an operation. Then, there were his reminiscences and thoughts of Shirley. He had been to dinner at her home once and to tea another time. They had been out together four times; they held hands in the cinema; and last night, when he had taken her home after a dinner-dance, he had kissed her at her door and she had responded with warmth and affection. Best of all, in its way, she and her mother were coming to a cocktail party in the mess in two days’ time and he’d be able to show her off proprietorially. Not only was she an enviable prize in herself, the loveliest girl ever to enter the mess, but also he had filched her from the very heart of a den of fighter pilots, between whom and the bomber boys there was a rivalry almost as intense as between the R.A.F. and the Luftwaffe.

  The sunshine was dimmed, however, by the information that the squadron was detailed for a leaflet raid that night.

  “What a bore!” he complained to Clive. “I was hoping we’d get a decent op today, with such fine weather. Never mind, it’s the best practice for when we are eventually allowed to go and bomb Jerry targets inland.”

  “What you mean is that my lousy navigation needs the practice.”

  “That’s what I mean,” Ridley agreed cheerfully.

  “It’s all very well for you, but if we do boring old circuits and bumps at least I get my turn in the pilot’s seat.”

  “Don’t worry, Ronnie, you’ll get your own crew soon. And I’ll have to go on ops with some strange bod of an observer whom I know nothing about.”

  “So will I, if I’m made a captain!”

  “Look on the bright side. Maybe we’ll both get real navigator-type observers, not second dickeys doubling as navigatorial experts.”

  “There’s gratitude! When have I ever got us lost?”

  “I wouldn’t know. You baffle me with so much bullshit and flannel about star shots and barometric pressure variations and wind drifts that I don’t know what the hell’s going on in my own aircraft. As far as I know, you could have got us well and truly lost a dozen times, without my being aware of it.”

  “But we’ve always got back to base, haven’t we?”

  “Well ... yes.”

  “There you are then,” said Clive triumphantly. “That’s more than some can say.”

  Which was true enough. One night, a crew returning from a bumph raid had gone so far astray that they had landed at a station in Yorkshire. A Hampden crew from a neighbouring East Anglian station had suffered an even greater aberration in navigation, resulting either from instrument defect or an incompetent observer, and ended their leaflet-dropping sortie in Holland. Others had never been seen after take-off and had either missed Britain altogether when returning from a reconnaissance off Norway and met their death in the Atlantic, or had mistaken the North Sea for Norfolk or Lincolnshire and alighted on it all too fatally.

  The squadron was sending four crews each from A and B flights that night, at 15-minute intervals and to four different targets.

  At briefing, the senior Intelligence officer, a squadron-leader reservist who had shot down many observation balloons in the Great War and was a zealot at his present job, with a fetish about balloon defences, gave them dire warnings.

  “You chaps have got only this narrow corridor between Denmark in the north and Holland in the south, remember. Which means the Hun can pack a pretty formidable amount of ack-ack into the coastal belt. And then there are other flak zones here ... here ... here ...” He kept pointing to the map.

  “All your targets are protected by barrage balloons as well as flak; but the balloons won’t bother you, because you’ll be flying well above them. However, if for any reason you have to come below five thousand feet, do for Heaven’s sake remember the damn things, what?” His eyes gleamed with memories of the flamers he had ignited with incendiary bullets in France in “the last show”.

  The squadron-commander was casual but firm. “Don’t take it for granted that you can ignore night fighters. True, they haven’t had much success so far; but, like us, they’re getting more experience all the time. Just as we are getting better, so we can expect them to improve their performance. Look out for searchlights: if they catch you, that gives the night fighters their chance. Stick to your routes out and home, and remember your height separation: we don’t want any collisions if people make navigation errors and stray off-course. There are Hampdens going out from Scampton as well, but they’ll be well to the south of you.”

  The meteorological visionary, a scruffy-looking man in his thirties who had lost all his teeth from some scrofulous affliction of the gums in youth, and now wore an ill-fitting set of false ones, slavered and gnashed and clicked his way through an encouraging forecast.

  “There’ll be scattered cloud from five thousand to twelve thousand feet, all the way; and over Germany you’ll find extensive clear patches which should give you a good sight of your targets. Winds moderate, south-westerly, so you’ll have a bit of help on the way out and a slight head-wind coming back.”

  Ridley took off at 2100 hrs, mildly displeased by the prospect of 480 miles each way and nearly five hours’ boredom. But, as soon as he was off the ground, seized as always by the pure pleasure of flying and the wondrous liberation of the spirit that only airmen at the controls of an aircraft at night and two miles and more above the earth can know, he began to enjoy himself. The crystal-clear stars brightened the soft darkness, the moon was rising, he was master of his fate. He acknowledged that no flight could ever be a bore. Not even one on which he was a deliveryman for tons of paper telling the misguided Jerries how their Nazi leaders had stashed away huge sums of money in Swiss banks at the nation’s expense, and what mugs they were not to see through the cynical exploitation to which the Nazis subjected the whole country. Hardly anyone would read all that guff and only one in a hundred thousand of those who did dare to would give it any credence. What a waste of time! Except as a navigation exercise, a strengthening of the crew’s team spirit and a way of getting in some more flying hours.

  *

  Bomber Command’s inactivity, hampered by bad weather, meant inactivity for the fighter Gruppen of the Luftwaffe.

  Oberleutnant Falch, weary of seeing his pilots’ long faces as they sat about smoking, playing cards, tossing balls for their dogs, leg-pulling and trying everything to hide their boredom, went to see the Gruppen Kommandeur. The Gruppe’s four Staffeln were dispersed among three airfields: Falch’s and another were both on the same aerodrome, with the Headquarters and Staff Flight.<
br />
  An hour later, Falch returned to his crew room looking pleased with himself.

  “Right, boys, listen to this. I’ve persuaded the Gruppen Kommandeur to give us a little treat. I’ve pointed out to him that using only Püppchen (dollies, i.e. single-seaters) at night is illogical. We two-seaters can see twice as much as they can! And they haven’t been exactly brilliant, so far; so it seems to me we should be allowed to show what we can do.”

  There was a general stir of interest and approval.

  “The main purpose of the glow-worms (searchlights) is to illuminate enemy Mollen. (Falch was a Berliner. A Molle was a peculiar kind of large beer-glass used in Berlin bars, and slang for a big aircraft.) I suggested to him that illuminating for night fighters — us — should be given priority. He agreed. He also made the request to Jafü (Jagdfliegerführer, the area Fighter Commander), who was quite keen on it. So, the next night the weather is decent enough to allow the enemy to come over and unload more bumph on us, we’ll be standing by to give him a warm reception.”

  There was cheering and cries of approval.

  Falch went on: “That means we’ll have to put in all the night flying we can, whatever the weather; and instrument flying by day. Starting now.”

  Night fighting both in Britain and Germany was crude and inefficient. Radar was in its early days and could not yet be used in conjunction with the specialist control of fighters. All that either side could do was to patrol a few of its day fighters in allotted areas and hope that the pilots would spot a bomber’s exhaust flames or see it silhouetted against the stars and moon or against searchlights. This had proved totally ineffectual apart from one or two fluke encounters when one of the obsolescent Me 109D fighters being used at night had stumbled upon a British leaflet-dropper and got in a lucky shot.

  Falch was right in claiming that the use of a two-seat fighter would more than double the chances of spotting the enemy. For although the Emil (pilot) would still have to devote half of his attention to flying, the gunner would be able to act wholly as a Franz (observer). Thus it was in effect a 300 per cent improvement of capability.