by John Nichol
They circled the airfield with four other bombers before coming in to land. Rusty eased back on the throttle as they touched down and then guided A Wing and a Prayer to dispersal. The crew climbed out and lit their cigarettes. Only then did they realise that Harry the rear gunner was missing. A flicker of alarm swept through them as they ran to his turret.
Harry was still in position, but unable to move or speak. He was frozen in place. Literally. His face was badly frostbitten. Where the spittle had drained from his mouth, an icicle as thick as a wrist hung below his mask, from his lip to his lap. Two of the crew helped him out of the plane. There would be no ops for him for a while.
The crew bus appeared. While Harry went away to thaw out, the discussion in the debriefing room focused on the night’s losses; Rusty and his crew spoke of the massacre, of the scores of planes they had watched being blasted from the sky. When asked how many, they estimated as many as 100. The intelligence officers snorted in disbelief.
Though the intelligence officers continued to dismiss their ‘wild’ guesses, Rusty and his crew refused to back down. Rusty felt increasingly exasperated; while these men had been warm and safe back in England, he and his companions had been in the thick of it. They were adamant that there had been terrible losses; the intelligence team remained adamant that the airmen were mistaken.
The atmosphere grew sour and antagonistic. Rusty had never experienced this before. He was relieved when the debrief was over.
For Ron Butcher’s crew and the other stragglers, the stiff headwind made the journey back to England feel interminable. At times the coast appeared to be getting further away rather than closer. The leg from the target area to Dieppe took more than four hours.
They reached the English coast shortly after dawn. As they came in to land, Ron wondered which other crews from his squadron had made it back. He knew their losses had been catastrophic.
Habitually as thorough as possible in debriefing, he was less forthcoming that morning. He was still uncertain about the precise location of their bombing run, and wanted to revisit his charts and logs before deciding exactly where they had ended up, what had happened, and why.
As it turned out, his questioners didn’t notice his reticence. ‘Goodness knows, there were lots of other activities to describe – such as aircraft taking a direct hit in the bomb bay, exploding into balls of white and orange, falling quickly to earth without the appearance of parachutes.’
Phew, thank God we’re home, Chick Chandler thought as his Lancaster touched down at Mildenhall. We got away with another one …
His 14th operation was done and dusted; only 16 more to go. In the briefing, he was glad of the shot of rum in his cocoa.
‘How many were lost?’ he was asked.
‘Forty. Possibly fifty.’
A conservative estimate, but the officers present still exchanged anxious looks. ‘Are you sure?’
Chick nodded. He could see they didn’t believe him, but he wasn’t going to worry too much. It wouldn’t change anything. There would still be another operation just around the corner. All he wanted to do right now was get into bed and go to sleep.
Les Cromarty, a rear gunner with 61 Squadron, was back half an hour later than they had envisaged because of the headwinds. As they approached their base in Coningsby, they identified themselves to those on the ground and waited to be given a landing number. ‘We expected to get at least 15 or 16 and be stacked, but instead we got Number One … We just couldn’t believe it, so we called again, but got the same reply. We were in fact the first to land, shortly after an aircraft from 619 Squadron crashed off the end of the runway. One or two more aircraft landed, but I think most of the others landed at other airfields.’
Three of the 12 crews that set out from Coningsby the previous night had been lost. Among them was an Australian friend of Les’s, a mid-upper named Harold Pronger. Some of his crew had baled out over the North Sea and Les wanted to go straight out on a search. He was told firmly that it would not be worth it; the water temperature was so low that no one could have survived in it for more than an hour. The men would be dead. ‘I think the worst thing about those raids was losing one’s friends. After a while you just became hardened to it, but eventually you stopped making close friends with anyone outside your own crew.’72
Harry Evans, a navigator with 550 Squadron, sat with his crew in their debriefing room, unable to banish the horrific images of the raid from his mind. Bled of all colour, the skin on their faces was still etched by the outline of their oxygen masks. When they had lost crews during previous raids the cloud cover had often shrouded the course of events. This time it had played out in vivid detail before their very eyes. The debriefing officers offered them cigarettes, hot sweet tea, even a tot of rum, but Harry and the lads were not in the mood.
‘We saw a lot of aircraft go down,’ his pilot said.
‘How many?’
‘No idea. A lot.’
‘How would you describe the trip?
‘A shaky do!’
It was a brief moment of levity.
‘Do you know how many we lost in total last night?’ someone asked.
‘Too early to say,’ came the reply, but everyone knew it had been a bad one.
That message was already seeping through to the upper echelons of Bomber Command. The Pathfinder chief, Air Vice Marshal Donald Bennett, had voiced opposition to the route the day before. Now he was waiting in the debriefing room at Graveley for the first of his crews to return.
The first through the door was Wing Commander Pat Daniels, a skilled pilot who had accompanied one of the new Pathfinder crews. His experience had saved them; he had taken their aircraft higher, way above their usual height, using every inch of sky to avoid the worst of the night fighter activity. When he saw Bennett, his customarily affable demeanour melted away. ‘Bloody hell!’ he bellowed. ‘Why did we have to go that way?’73
Bennett knew Daniels well and calmly asked why he was so animated. Daniels refused to be pacified. He told Bennett that in 76 previous operations he had never seen losses on this scale.
The chief’s initial assumption was that Daniels must be exaggerating. But he knew he was not prone to hyperbole. He began to worry that his fears of the previous morning had been realised.
Daniels gave him the headlines: the moonlight, the condensation trails, the sparse cloud on the way out, the thick cloud over the target, and the swarm of night fighters which had wreaked havoc on the stream.
His normally brisk and resolute superior said little, but he was clearly shaken by Daniels’s account.
As the last few bombers landed at their bases that morning, Cy Barton’s crew was one of the many still unaccounted for. His Halifax had become lost somewhere over mainland Europe. As they flew on through the darkness, unable to see any landmarks below, those left on board tried frantically to calculate their position.
The searchlights they had evaded earlier had been near Frankfurt; since then they had travelled due west. Someone suggested there was a chance they would fly over the English Channel and out into the Atlantic unless they altered course. Unaware that the safety of the emergency airfield at Woodbridge lay only 20 minutes ahead of them, Cy decided to follow a more northerly route to make sure they crossed British soil.
Timber saw a faint glimmer of blue below. If they were convoy lights attached to a ship’s stern, it meant they were flying over water. But where? The Atlantic, the English Channel or the North Sea?
Cy turned back on to a westerly heading. A watery grey dawn started to break, much to their relief; they would soon be able to see more. Through the gloaming they saw a Beaufighter flying past. They flashed an SOS signal with a torch, but it showed no sign of acknowledgement. The flicker of hope faded and they were alone in the darkness once more.
Freddie Brice, the rear gunner, mouthed a silent prayer for their safe return. He turned to look at Cy. Once again he got the thumbs-up and a broad grin. His anxiety eased.
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sp; Eyes straining through the Perspex canopy, they were finally able to make out the vast silhouettes of barrage balloons outlined against the dawn sky. Though they now had no working wireless or intercom, they began to hear the distinctive ‘squeaker’ radio noise the balloons emitted to warn Allied aircraft of their presence.
As Cy skirted around them, they heard the familiar boom of anti-aircraft fire resounding through the sky. Shells started to explode around them. We’re being fired at by our own defences! Freddie could not believe it. They had been chased and harried by enemy fighters, avoided the glare of enemy searchlights, been targeted by enemy flak and managed to navigate their way across Europe by their wits – only to be fired at by their own side.
Cy immediately banked the bomber and flew back out to sea. Timber crawled into the nose, wired up the Aldis lamp and started sending out frantic SOS signals to those firing at them from the ground. The guns fell silent. Freddie again looked to his skipper for reassurance. ‘We cruised in over the coastline. I was standing beside Cy and he was grinning all over his face and giving the thumbs-up. Then he shouted to me to go back and tell the engineer to change tanks. He must have noticed a failing in the engines.’
Maurice was at the main spar, standing over the tank selector cocks. He knew he had to work swiftly. He switched the tanks. The air was filled with the pungent odour of aviation fuel. The damage they had suffered during the endless night fighter attacks had caused the fuel to run out of the engine rather than into it. The tanks were empty. The aircraft was running dry.
Freddie was clambering back to the cockpit when he met Timber heading the other way. ‘Crash positions!’ he shouted.
Cyril had decided to put his faith in luck and the Lord, and try to land the plane wherever he could.
Twelve-year-old Alan Mitcheson was tucked up in his bed in Ryhope, on the Durham coast, after leaving the family’s Anderson shelter at 5.30 a.m. He had turned down the offer of a cup of tea from his mum because he needed to be up for school in only a few hours. As he drifted off, he was jolted awake once more by the sound of a bomber in the sky.
Like many of his contemporaries, he had learned to distinguish between the sounds of the RAF and enemy bombers. This is definitely one of ours, he thought. But that didn’t stop the anti-aircraft guns firing off a deafening burst. That’s strange; guns firing after the all-clear had gone. He went to his bedroom window in time to see the roundels of a four-engine British bomber overhead. He watched it bank and disappear into the distance.
Les Lawther usually finished his night shift at the colliery at five, but that morning it was his turn to check the water pump in the yard. To reach it, he needed to be lowered by the engine operator, who didn’t start work until seven, so he ambled down to the spotter’s shed, a cabin built for watching aircraft, which was manned 24 hours a day.
Jack Coxon was on duty. He and Les chatted for a while, then he wrapped himself up against the nagging east wind and went out for a smoke. That was when he first saw the crippled bomber coming in over the sea.
Jack raised his binoculars. ‘She’s one of ours,’ he called.
Les could tell that the Halifax’s propellers were only working on one side, which must have been why the pilot was flying low. Someone on board was flashing a light – some kind of signal, he assumed. Then just before it reached land, the bomber turned and headed away from them.74
Alan Mitcheson had climbed back into bed when he heard the bomber return. Except now it sounded different, wounded, as if the engines were failing. He dashed back to the window. He knew it was the same aircraft, a Halifax, and that it was struggling to stay airborne. It was flying directly towards him, its lights piercing the early-morning gloom. The engines were starting to splutter, like the sound of a car misfiring. With every second it was getting lower and lower. There was no way it would be able to stay in the sky much longer.
On board, Cy remained at the helm. Maurice, Fred and Timber sat with their backs to the cold, vibrating metal of the rear spar, hands behind their heads, leaning forward, bracing themselves for the impact.
Alan Mitcheson watched as the Halifax flew in, no more than 100 feet above his house. He hurtled to his parents’ bedroom as the plane flew directly overhead and watched from their window as it appeared to bank to its left, trying to avoid the houses across the street. And then there was ‘a noise like thunder’.
Les Lawther hadn’t been able to move a muscle as the bomber strained to remain clear of the pewter-grey swirl of the sea. He watched, open-mouthed, as it stumbled towards the hulking gantry at the pithead. He could see the pilot fighting every inch of the way, nursing the starving engine as it went through its death throes. ‘I contend he saw the headgear, because he was very low, and naturally he tried to avoid it. But he was too near to get round and his wing just caught the end house on West Terrace and the plane just tumbled … If he went the other way, he would have hit the house on Hollycarr Terrace.’
Seventeen-year-old Arthur Milburn was out in his back yard when he heard the whine of the dying aircraft. As soon as he saw it heading his way he fled towards the cover of the doorway, fearing it was an enemy bomber. ‘I saw it going down between the houses of Hollycarr Terrace and Powell Terrace, catching the houses on each side with its wings, then eventually hitting the end house of West Terrace … I heard an almighty crash; there was no fire or explosions, just the crash and rumble of buildings being demolished.’
Tom Richardson lived in the end-of-terrace house on West Terrace with his mum, dad and younger brother. He was on the front step when he heard the sound of rushing wind. As it grew louder, he dived instinctively for cover. Seconds later there was an almighty crash, the agonising shriek of tortured metal and stone, and the air filled with dust.
His younger brother Ken had gone inside with their mother. She was putting the kettle on the fire when the plane hit; he had been standing next to the fireplace. The impact tossed them both into the corner next to the window. Rubble cascaded down around them. The next few seconds seemed to last an eternity.
Coughing and choking, Ken hauled himself to his feet. His mum cried out from somewhere beside him. His scrabbling hand found hers. As the dust started to clear, he began to realise that the only wall of their house still standing was the one they had been thrown against. His mother thrust him through the smashed window into the arms of a group of men who had sprinted to the crash site. ‘Then two of them walked round and had to prise her fingers off the windowsill. She wouldn’t leave go.’
Tom got up, brushed the debris off his neck and shoulders, and squinted through the dust cloud. The door he had been standing by, the step he had been standing on, were no longer there; in fact the whole front of his home had disappeared. Two bedrooms had been demolished; iron bedsteads hung out of the side of the building.
The wreckage seemed to be strewn as far as the eye could see. An engine steamed gently in the Richardsons’ garden; the wings were nearby, cast aside like driftwood. Much of the body of the plane had careered into the colliery yard; some had settled on the hillside leading up to the chalk-faced ravine above the railway track.
Men from all around the village converged on the ruined Halifax. Alan Mitcheson prepared to follow them, desperate to see what had happened, but he was ordered back to bed. He lay there, wide awake, vibrating with tension, hearing the sound of excited voices in the gardens below, wondering what had happened to the men on board the bomber.
Les Lawther sprinted from the spotter’s shed as soon as he saw the crash. He found the rear fuselage lying almost upright, across a gangway and a mud heap. The wings had been severed; there were only a series of gaping holes where they and the rest of the plane should have been. The bomber’s signature code, LK 797, and mark, LK-E, were clearly visible alongside its distinctive roundel. The shell was remarkably intact. He looked through the nearest hole and saw three prone figures.
As the plane had come down, Freddie Brice felt a bump, a lurch to starboard and port and a blu
e flash. Then silence.
He sensed a pathway opening up before him. Where was he? He felt as if someone was coming to lead him along the path. Then, in the distance, he heard a voice calling for help. The path vanished. There was another voice too. It all came back to him then: Cy up front; he, Timber and Maurice assuming crash positions, and then the bang and the lurch and the mind-numbing force of the crash. He started to cry out too. He became conscious of grimy faces looking down at him. He raised his hands and felt the firm grip of his rescuers.
‘How many were in the aircraft?’ a gruff voice asked as soon as he was eased out of the wreckage.
‘Four …’ He turned to point to the aircraft’s nose, where Cy would be. It wasn’t there. Nor were the wings or the engines. There was only one half of the fuselage, where the three of them had miraculously survived.
Les helped the other two out, one by one, and then told the driver to get the colliery ambulance out of its shed. ‘The crew were in shock. All they said to me was “Get the pilot …” I got back in again. I knew where the pilot would sit, but the front end was missing. There were some men on the gangway then and I said, “Will you have a look in the gardens to see if you can see the pilot?”’
The men reported back. The nose was at the top of the ravine, above the railway track, an area of land the local kids called The Hope. Someone said the pilot might have fallen down it. Les rounded up a group and headed to the scene.
CHAPTER 15
Disaster
The wreckage of Cyril Barton’s Halifax
Through the soft grey light of dawn, Fritz Fink, his family and their neighbours surveyed the damage to their house, their village and those nearby. Pettensiedel had been hit hardest. A bomb had landed at its centre, obliterating four residential houses and damaging several others. The villagers started digging through the rubble. They found six bodies.
