Bombing Run

by Richard Townsend Bickers

  ‘They can’t see unless there’s a full moon.’ Wheldon hoped he was right. He had been disillusioned badly enough about the efficacy of fighters by day against the combined fire of several bombers. He would not relish finding out that he had been misled about their night capability as well. ‘Anyway, we’ll go to the Ops Room straight after dinner and see what they’ve got to offer.’

  They air tested their new Wimpey, F for Freddie, and polished all its perspex. They watched the bundles of leaflets being loaded and discussed tying them up so firmly that they would not scatter, but fall in lumps that might squash a few Germans caught out in the street or at least smash some roofs.

  ‘We could drop something,’ Fuller said. ‘What about empty bottles?’

  ‘You scrounge some bottles, we’ll drop ‘em,’ Wheldon told him. ‘Good idea. They make a screeching sound while they’re dropping: Jerry might think it’s a secret weapon.’

  In the Ops Room after lunch the duty controller, a chubby squadron leader Reservist with a 1914-18 observer’s half-wing and some good medal ribbons, told them they were the first crew to appear. ‘So you can take your pick from the whole caboodle.’

  ‘What’s on offer, sir?’ Wheldon had brought his whole crew, and they clustered round the blackboard on which the targets were chalked.

  Bremen… Hamburg… Hanover… Cologne…

  The door opened and closed and Wing Commander Norton’s voice said ‘Hello, Flight. Come early to make sure of a cushy one? Quick in and out?’

  Wheldon turned, his face at once warm with resentment at the implication given to the lightly spoken words by the underlying tone.

  He replied without taking time to reflect. ‘No, sir. I was looking for one that’ll give us the best training. Munich, I reckon.’

  ‘Long slog.’

  ‘That’s the idea, sir.’

  ‘No worry about Flak, however far into Germany you go. The bundles have to be dropped from thirteen thousand feet, to scatter.’ Norton was bland and he was looking Wheldon straight in the eye, but still he communicated a suspicion of an unwelcome implication. If I’d dived to a thousand feet from choice, instead of losing control of the aircraft, last time, Wheldon thought, the Wingco wouldn’t have said that; or not in the same way.

  From base to the German coast, near the Dutch frontier, was 320 miles. Munich lay 400 miles further. Eight hundred miles over the enemy country meant four hours’ flying. Their leg across Lincolnshire and the North Sea, and back, would add almost as long. They would be vulnerable to Flak and fighters for some five hours altogether. But, as Mac had said so confidently, Jerry might be unwilling to reveal the disposition of his defences by shining searchlights or ordering Flak to open fire. For someone who was about to fly his first op, Mac had been rather excessively sure of himself.

  They went into the Met office, where the Met man enthusiastically showed them his charts and heaped information on them.

  ‘All we really want to know,’ Wheldon told him, ‘is what the weather at base will be like on our E.T.R.’ Estimated time of return. ‘And what other airfields will be open if we have to divert.’ He gave the Met man a mischievous look. ‘I mean airfields within the range we’ll have left; not in South Wales or Cornwall.’

  ‘I know what you mean.’ It was no good trying to rag the long-suffering meteorologist into being huffy. He was always placid. From his earliest days on R.A.F. stations he had been frequently told that all his forecasts were based on the consistency of a bunch of seaweed he kept at home, and all his scientific data was eyewash. He didn’t mind a bit. None of the crews who persistently pulled his leg knew the agonies he suffered when a crew was lost because a forecast turned out to be inaccurate. His wife knew. She had seen his tears. Errors were not his fault. They were nobody’s fault. The crude system for reporting weather in those days was to blame.

  ‘We’ll take off at nineteen hundred,’ Wheldon decided. ‘E.T.R. about o-three-hundred, Taffy?’

  ‘About that.’ Rhys looked at the controller. ‘I’ll phone you with the E.T.R. when I’ve worked it out, sir.’

  ‘Righto, Sergeant, no hurry. Got all the gen you need, Flight?’

  ‘We’re going to the Intelligence office now, sir. Yes, thanks, we’re all set except for that.’

  ‘Weather looks good, what?’

  ‘Good enough to bomb, sir.’ Wheldon looked and sounded grim.

  ‘I can imagine how you feel.’ The controller had dropped his share of bombs in Germany in 1918 and wished he were young enough to do so again. ‘It won’t be long now before you get your chance. Meanwhile these Nickel raids are good practice.’

  Nickel was the code name for leaflet dropping. Raids? Wheldon didn’t think the task merited the description.

  If they landed back by three, they’d be in bed by four, after de-briefing and tea and sandwiches. They’d be released until fourteen hundred hours, two-o’clock. They wouldn’t be on night flying tomorrow. He’d be able to take Audrey to the flicks.

  Twenty-eight hours was a long time to look ahead, when you were about to go dicing over Germany, even if you anticipated a quiet trip. The I.O. issued them with escape packs containing a compass concealed in a button, German currency, a map printed on silk that might pass for a handkerchief or scarf. It made Wheldon realise how unwise it was to count on a safe return, even from so unaggressive a mission. There was an egocentric quality about his resentment at being exposed to the danger of ending his active war that night. He would feel bitter and thwarted if he were killed or taken prisoner without having done more damage to the enemy than had been possible so far.

  *

  The signs of tension were apparent when they boarded the aircraft. To the four of them who had already flown on operations it recalled the tracer sizzling around them, the Flak exploding with tremendous noise, vivid colour and violent shock waves of blast. It brought to mind the sight of burning and disintegrating Wellingtons and the misery of their own experience of having to alight on the sea. To the two newcomers it presented an awesome confrontation with the unknown. For all of them it was part of the painful acquisition of maturity and confidence and the ability to endure, which began afresh with every raid of any kind.

  For some men, as was already becoming apparent, the start of an operation was not a further advance in the process of hardening, but of erosion; another bowel-racking step towards the collapse of courage that was stigmatised as lack of moral fibre.

  Two other Wellingtons were preparing to take off at short intervals after F for Freddie. Both captains had chosen from the more distant targets. Squadron Leader Sumner was going to Stuttgart and the handsome pilot officer who had aroused Wheldon’s jealousy over Audrey at the first all-ranks dance was going to Nuremberg. Both were about 100 miles closer than Munich. Vachell was on a navigation exercise to the Shetlands. His crew was not yet operational. Wheldon spared a moment to speculate which target he would have chosen: Bremen, probably; the nearest. And who was to say that it wouldn’t have been more sensible than courting such trouble as might be around by penetrating as deeply into Germany as he was about to?

  The Engineering, Armament and Signals officers were all at dispersals to see each crew off and supply any last-minute information needed. The ground crews were all there, to assure the captains that this or that which they had asked to be done after air testing had been done. Although Wheldon had been through it all before, and in the far greater apprehension of knowing that he was on his way to bomb heavily armed warships, not merely to dump bundles of printed paper, the darkness gave the occasion a special aura of hazard.

  Wing Commander Norton loomed out of the night. He was not flying. ‘Got plenty of rations, Flight? You’re going to need them.’

  He’s being very matey, thought Wheldon; not without a certain amount of suspicion. ‘Yes, thank you, sir.’

  ‘Plot any Flak or searchlights you see very carefully, all right?’

  ‘I’ve told my observer to keep his finger out, sir.�
�

  ‘It’s very important.’ The I.O. had already emphasised this at briefing. ‘We’ll be carrying bombs over Germany before long and we need to know where the gaps in the defences are.’

  ‘I know, sir.’

  ‘If you’ve got plenty of fuel in hand on your way back, you could try orbiting, to see if you can provoke them into having a go.’ Norton was still being cheerfully chatty and Wheldon was not sure whether to be mildly aghast or whether the Wingco was indulging in a little sarcastic leg-pulling. ‘Choose your place, though: no use trying to stir Jerry up if you’re fifty miles from any sensitive area.’

  Wheldon decided that he would treat this lightly. ‘Is that an order, sir?’

  ‘I said, if you have plenty of fuel in hand.’

  ‘I’ll see how it goes, sir.’

  ‘Have a decent trip.’

  I wonder what his version of a decent trip is? ‘Thank you, sir.’

  Norton faded into the blackness and Wheldon climbed aboard with his crew’s amused comments making light of the Wing Commander’s words.

  As soon as both engines were running and he began his checks, he was assailed by the queasiness that had come at this stage before each previous raid. He dreaded finding that there was a drop in oil pressure, or a faulty magneto, or a defect on the intercom, that would force him to abandon the sortie. All were common faults which developed of themselves from time to time, between an air test that had been fault-free and the time for take-off. But they were also the excuses pleaded by captains who were lacking in courage. It would be a humiliation to have to cancel take-off and incur suspicion, even if a defect were obviously genuine. He had suffered from such sudden unserviceability on occasion before the war, as every other pilot had, and it had caused him only intense annoyance. Things were different now and somewhere in the darkness the Wing Commander was watching.

  Fuller had brought a carrier bag full of clinking empty bottles he had found in a dustbin behind the sergeants’ mess. An unusual way to initiate his membership, Wheldon had remarked. To relieve his own tension, Wheldon asked ‘Got your missiles safely stowed, Earthy?’

  ‘Put ‘em near the flare chute, Skip.’ Fuller hesitated. ‘I… I peed into one.’

  There was a sudden eruption of laughter on the intercom.

  ‘Good idea.’ Wheldon was chuckling. ‘Why didn’t we all contribute? Right, let’s roll.’ An end to the fooling and let us get down to business.

  Freddie rumbled along the dimly lit perimeter track. The Chance light cast its brilliant flood from the back of its vehicle, in the centre of the flarepath. Wheldon was thankful that he was not duty pilot on this bitter night, with not even a caravan to shelter in. The black-and-white checked caravan on the flare-path came later in the war. The only comfort to be found was in the cab of a vehicle.

  The duty pilot flashed him a green with an Aldis lamp and he swung the aircraft directly into the wind, held it on the brakes while he revved up, then released the brakes and was thrust forward by the instant surge of two 1,000 horsepower engines. The wheels juddered over the frozen earth. The snow scintillated in the wash of the Wellington’s lights, the flarepath lights and the Chance light. Stars glittered through the huge spaces between the scattered cloud. Very romantic, thought Wheldon. And a waste of petrol and aircraft hours, with no bombs aboard. Look on it as a nav ex and hope it’ll do the crew some good.

  Here and there a gleam of light showed where a blackout curtain had not been properly closed. Sparks rose from a railway engine and trailed behind it. A carelessly screened and opened pub door allowed a shaft of brightness to escape. The coast came in view as a white line where surf was breaking on the beaches.

  They climbed steadily. The gunners tested their guns. They kept climbing. Draughts skittered around the cockpit, the turrets, the whole length of the fuselage. Wireless operator and observer exchanged brief messages, asking for, passing and acknowledging bearings. Rhys gave Wheldon a slight change of course. It became colder… and colder. At 13,000 ft they were all shivering and stiff and Wheldon no longer felt any pity for the duty pilot. He would willingly have swapped places.

  He did not allow chatter on the intercom. From time to time he made a check call to ensure that everyone was alert. An hour after take-off he handed over to Macleod and went round to each station to have a few words, look at the observer’s chart and log, talk to the wireless operator about signal strengths. He borrowed the sextant and, from the astro dome, took star shots to compare his readings with Rhys’s. When Rhys warned that the enemy coast was fifteen minutes ahead he resumed control.

  ‘Ten minutes, Skipper.’

  ‘I can see it, Taffy. Looks like lights, to me.’

  ‘Lights, Skip?’

  ‘Yes. What d’you think, Mac?’

  ‘Aye, those are lights, all right.’

  ‘That’s Holland, Taffy.’

  ‘Bloody hell, Skip… it can’t be.’

  ‘Where are we, then? Bloody Denmark?’ Wheldon made no attempt to conceal his annoyance.

  A chastened silence followed.

  ‘Sorry, Skip… wind must be all to cock… from due north and twice as strong as Met said.’

  ‘I’m turning north… onto three-six-zero.’

  ‘Very good, I’ll check everything…’

  ‘When the lights end, we’ll know we’re off the German coast.’ Wheldon regretted his previous sarcasm. He spoke with his usual calm civility and patience.

  In a few minutes there was only darkness immediately on the starboard side. Rhys gave him a new course and he turned towards the coast again.

  A salvo of shells exploded below them. Three searchlights swept the sky. Evidently the enemy was not concerned about revealing himself here. It was to be expected that the coast would be strongly defended, so he was giving little away. Wheldon began to weave and switchback.

  His head felt muzzy, his limbs heavy and unresponsive. It had always been the same whenever he flew above 10,000 ft; which had been seldom. Now, disappointed by Rhys’s inaccurate landfall and accusing himself of carelessness for his own obvious error when he had taken some star shots, his mind and body both sluggish, he found the instruments blurred when he looked at them. He switched on his oxygen supply and inhaled deeply. His mind became sharp and lucid again, his arms and legs reacted swiftly, his vision was no longer hazy.

  The searchlights were still probing, the shells still exploding close enough to hear and to feel their blast. He stopped switchbacking and began climbing, weaving from side to side as he did so.

  ‘Oxygen on, everybody. Check in.’

  They responded in their well drilled sequence. Wheldon levelled off at 15,000 ft, Flak and searchlights well astern.

  ‘Rear gunner, Skipper. Searchlights out. Flak’s stopped.’

  ‘Watch out for fighters, then.’

  Wheldon’s faculties were all functioning as they should, again. He began to think about the effects of rarefied air. No medical examination had ever revealed that he suffered more quickly than the average when his oxygen supply was reduced. Worrying about his temporary loss of swift co-ordination of mind and muscles, he decided that in future he would go into oxygen at 10,000 ft or even 8,000. What he would not do was tell the M.O. what he had experienced. His fear of being grounded was aggravated now that he was at war. The humiliation of being suspected of seeking an excuse not to fly would be unbearable. With the thought, an image of Wing Commander Norton’s ironical look came to mind and he heard the Wing Commander’s tart disparaging phrases.

  They droned through the night. Now and then Rhys, sounding confident, reported their position. ‘Can you see the Rhine, Skipper?... Kassel coming up dead ahead… can you see the river? Can you see where the Eder and the Fulda join, south of the town?... Wurzburg dead ahead…’

  They were several miles east of their intended track when they approached Kassel, but the rivers showed clearly and Wheldon corrected his course. Rhys was able to check the wind accurately, and they overfl
ew their other landmarks precisely. By the time Rhys announced that they would be at their target in 15 minutes, they were all so cold that it was an effort to take any interest.

  ‘I’m going to fly straight across. Shovel the bumph out as fast as you can. If you can’t get rid of it all, I’ll turn and recross the town. But we don’t want to hang around.’

  They had been unmolested since the coast. Sometimes they had seen what looked like flames at the exhausts of other aircraft, but no fighters had menaced them. It was unlikely that their presence over Munich would be ignored.

  Edkins and Donovan went to the flare chute, grumbling to each other about the cold and the effort needed to lift the heavy bundles off the floor and up to chest height. They could not plug in to the oxygen supply from their temporary position and their laboured breath became increasingly stertorous as they worked. Both were soon trembling from the exertion.

  Munich lay in a snowbound countryside, its roofs as white as the surrounding fields and woods. Only shadows cast by the stars and a half moon indicated streets and squares, which were also snow-covered. Smoke and sparks from factory chimneys and from locomotives in the marshalling yard confirmed that they had found their target.

  Searchlights struck up through the darkness and Flak boomed and hurled its crimson-centred explosions about the sky. Wheldon had come down to 13000 ft long ago, but the shells were bursting beneath the Wellington and nowhere within several hundred feet laterally. They could not feel any blast. Presently a beam found them. Its glare dazzled Wheldon and Macleod in the cockpit and Fuller in the tail turret. A second beam swung across the city to intersect the first. F for Freddie was pinned like a moth in a collector’s cabinet.

  Flak started bursting close enough to make Freddie pitch and yaw. Wheldon snaked port and starboard in irregular curves, avoiding a rhythm which might help the gunners and their predictors to follow its pattern. He climbed a few hundred feet and descended, also irregularly. He flew beyond the city’s boundary.

  Edkins came panting into the cockpit and leaned over Wheldon. ‘About a quarter of ‘em left, Skipper.’