‘We do have some ideas for reducing the problems the Allies experienced in my time, which we’ll go into later.’
Churchill raised an eyebrow and enquired, with a touch of irony, ‘have you decided on the date yet?’
Don wasn’t falling for that one. ‘Well sir, that will of course be a matter for yourself and the President. However, bearing in mind the importance of avoiding stormy weather, the need for a high tidal range to make it easier for the landing craft to get on and off the beaches, and the usefulness of a full moon to aid the night-time airborne attacks, that gives us three possible target dates: the twentieth of April, the nineteenth of May or the eighteenth of June. The first date could be too vulnerable to spring gales, the last will give us little time to expand the invasion area before the end of summer, so that leads us to the nineteenth of May next year, give or take a few days.’
Churchill nodded. ‘That confirms the views of the more orthodox bodies. Now let’s have another brandy and talk about these ideas you have…’
It was, indeed, a very long night.
Spring 1943
U.S. JOINS BATTLE OF GERMANY; NON-STOP AIR WAR PLEDGED
Don glanced at the headlines and passed over a penny for the newspaper. After almost a year of preparation, the Americans were in action at last. The picture on the front page showed a squadron of B-17s, bristling fiercely with multiple gun turrets. Much good will it do you, he thought, when the Me 262s get amongst you. At least they couldn’t say they hadn’t been warned. He walked on, feeling saddened.
He might have been surprised to learn that the Americans had heeded some at least of the dire warnings and predictions that the British had been so keen to make. The crews certainly felt confident enough as the huge formations gradually coalesced in the clear morning air. Each wing of fifty-four aircraft formed one immense defensive system, consisting of three eighteen-aircraft combat boxes stacked one above the other. Each box consisted of three squadrons in staggered formation. The entire battle formation was over a mile wide, half a mile deep and six hundred yards long. Any enemy fighters attempting to attack would face the concentrated fire of scores of heavy machine guns, whichever way they came. Six miles behind came the next combat wing, then the next. One hundred and sixty aircraft headed for north Germany, screened from above by an equal number of the new Merlin-engined P-51 Mustang long-range fighters and some supporting squadrons of RAF Reapers, whose apprehensive pilots in no way shared the enthusiasm of their inexperienced allies.
The B-17s bore little resemblance to the sleek Manchesters other than in the number of engines, and could not match their speed, altitude and bombload performance. But then, they were designed for a different purpose. While the British bombers fought in darkness, relying on concealment and speed for their survival, the big, tough, Boeings went in under the glare of the sun, challenging the enemy to come, returning fire with fire.
‘You have to balance the rights and wrongs of the situation. So a few thousand German civilians get too close to our primary targets for their own good. What’s that against the millions being slaughtered in Russia? And the millions more who’ll be killed if we don’t stop the Nazis as soon as possible?’ Peter was defending his beloved RAF, as usual.
Inevitably, it was Mary who rose to the bait. ‘Just because the Nazis are committing horrible crimes, that doesn’t make it right for us to follow suit. What are we fighting this war for anyway, if not to preserve decent values?’
‘Mary, if we fight this war with our gloves on when the enemy is wearing knuckledusters we’re likely to lose, and that’d do far more damage to our “decent values” than anything we could think up. Besides,’ added Don, looking somewhat uncomfortable to be arguing against his wife, ‘it’s not just good for our public’s morale to see us hitting back, it’s essential to reassure the Russians that we’re doing our best.’
‘I know, I know, we’ve been through all that before. But as far as public morale is concerned, you should see the results of the latest survey. The strongest supporters of bombing live miles away from the action. Our people still living in the blitzed cities are much more reluctant to visit the same fate on the Germans.’
‘However you look at it,’ commented Peter, ‘it’s working. We know that German industry is being turned upside down to disperse itself across the country, on top of which an increasing percentage of their research and production is being diverted to anti-aircraft measures. What Bomber Command has achieved is being added to by the American Eighth Air Force, because now the Luftwaffe is having to bring back their day fighters as well’.
‘What’s more, Hitler’s determination to strike back means that still more effort is being put into reprisal attacks against England,’ murmured Charles, as usual appearing to enjoy the heated debate. ‘Which ever way you look at it, we’re taking some pressure off the Russians.’
‘Furthermore,’ Peter added, ‘our decrypts show that we’re succeeding in undermining the Lufwaffe’s defences altogether. They’re already fully stretched and beginning to skimp on their training. Every time the Americans send in a daylight attack they down a few more of the Luftwaffe pilots. And every replacement will be less experienced, so will be an easier target the next time round. It doesn’t even matter if we bomb nothing, just by forcing the Luftwaffe to attack the bombers, we can wear them out in months.’
Mary cast a look of exasperated appeal to Don, who shifted uncomfortably in his seat. ‘I’m afraid he’s right. With our Empire Air Training Scheme we’re assured a constant stream of well-trained pilots from abroad, more than we can use, actually, and our American friends are doing much the same. The only problem is the new German jets. We have them as well, of course, but they don’t have the range to accompany the bombers deep into Germany.’
Peter nodded. ‘Correct. Those Me 262s gave us a real scare at first, but they seem to be tricky and difficult to handle – they’re losing a lot of pilots to accidents. And we’ve got their bases pinned down. They’re easy enough to kill when they’re low and slow. Not much fun when they get among the Fortresses, though.’
The Gruppe Kommandeur sat in the cockpit, the familiar trickle of tension running through him. He heard laughter far away, near the accommodation blocks, where the off-duty staff were relaxing, and shivered slightly despite the warmth. The Gefechsstand had ordered Sitzbereitschaft – cockpit readiness – over an hour ago, and still no word. The Americans would be coming, all right, he had no doubt of that; the only question was exactly where and when. The Me 262 had a limited range, so it was important to hold them on the ground for as long as possible.
Far above, the fast Fw 187 Fühlungshalter – master fighters – would be hunting the bomber formations, not to attack but to follow, radio their locations and report on the weather. Once battle was joined they would report the results of the attacks, giving the commanders on the ground a constant appreciation of the progress of the battle. That is, if they managed to avoid the attention of the escorts, the Kommandeur thought grimly.
He tried to relax, stretching as much as he could, tensing and relaxing each muscle group in turn. Fighting he never minded, but this waiting…
He tried to distract himself by running a mental checklist over his aircraft. First, the guns. The four three-centimetre Rheinmetall-Borsig MK 108 ‘pneumatic hammers’, two with eighty rounds each, two with a hundred, each capable of firing at ten rounds per second. Eight seconds of firing with all four guns, another two seconds with two guns, provided that the ammunition belts weren’t broken by any violent manoeuvres as they so often were. The muzzle velocity was low at only five hundred metres per second, but the jet’s attack speed added another two hundred to that, and the Minengeschoss shells were devastating. The techs had calculated that only three or four hits were necessary to bring down one of the American bombers, compared with fifteen or twenty hits from the two-centimetre guns. They had gone on to calculate that only about two percent of shots hit their target, so only one-fifty to t
wo hundred three-centimetre rounds needed to be carried for each kill, instead of nearly a thousand two-centimetre. He smiled wryly. Those were average figures. Anyone in this crack Gruppe unable to do a lot better than that would soon find himself on other duties.
Then there were the engines. The young face of the Kommandeur creased slightly. They were a brilliant design, no doubt about it, but he had heard from a Junkers engineer that a shortage of nickel and chromium had resulted in inferior alloys being used, which severely restricted the reliable life of the jets. It was also important to avoid making violent throttle changes, which could lead to flame-outs. He consciously relaxed again. Either they would last through the sortie or they wouldn’t. There was nothing he could do to affect that, so there was no point in worrying.
He put his mind into happier channels. Now those new guided missiles they were testing, they would really make a difference…
The alarm sounded a few seconds later.
The bomb-aimer peered down through the nose of the B-17. A scatter of individual clouds and below that, a continuous thin haze, the ground invisible. He sighed in frustration. The magnificent Norden bombsight on which so many hopes had been placed would be no good, as usual. The Air Force had not properly appreciated that not everywhere enjoyed weather like California’s. Still, as he wasn’t the lead bomber that wasn’t his responsibility. His job was simply to drop the bombs when the leader did. In ideal conditions the entire combat wing would drop its load to an accuracy of a few hundred yards, but if the leader was depending on the H2X bombing radar they would stand no more chance of hitting the target than the RAF’s night bombers under similar conditions.
He looked around at the rest of the formation, and grimaced. Contrails streamed from the engines, like giant white arrows pointing at the aircraft. Once the defending fighters got above the cloud, they would have no trouble finding them. Higher still were the escorts; not that they did much escorting, he reflected, mulling over the arguments over tactics. All the fighters did was chase the German fighters, leaving the bombers to deal with any which got through. He could understand the argument for that, but it still would have been mighty comforting to have the ‘little friends’ around them.
Five kilometres behind the bombers and two thousand metres above them, the Kommandeur assessed the situation. His aircraft and the other three of his Schwarm had been accurately placed by their ground control radar, helped by the lurking Fühlungshalter. Focke-Wulf 190s of their neighbouring Geschwader had covered their take-offs, engaging the attacking Allied fighters so the jets could climb safely away. Considerable cost and effort had been expended to place them exactly where they were. Now it was up to them. He gave a brief command and the long attack dive commenced.
Now he felt no nervousness, only a fierce concentration as the bomber formation steadily expanded in his field of view. His gaze flicked between the instruments and the gunsight. Eight-sixty, eight-eighty, nine hundred kilometres per hour! The jet streaked through the fighter cover, dived underneath the bombers which suddenly seemed to rush backwards past him, then he pulled up and shed speed rapidly to give time to aim. The huge shape of a B-17 filled the gunsight as the aircraft vibrated to the hammer of the cannon. One second, two, then the starboard inner radial exploded into flame, propeller spinning crazily away. Eighty rounds fired, a detached part of his mind thought, that was better than two percent! He banked onto another target, saw the ball turret swivel to point towards him, fired again, a raking shot as he swept past. No time to assess damage, time to ram the throttles open and climb away from the bombers. The Messerchmitt suddenly juddered and slewed to one side, an engine streaming smoke, as the defending Mustang plunged almost vertically past him. The Kommandeur cursed and turned the crippled plane away. Get lower, lose speed, bail out, he thought mechanically. And hope I can persuade the locals I’m not an American bomber pilot before they do anything rash.
The Unteroffizier surveyed his crew with satisfaction, all poised in their allotted places around the FlaK. The Kanonier 1, whose job was to lay the gun in azimuth, K2 who set the elevation, K3 who loaded the gun and K4, 5, 6 who passed the ammunition. He looked around the platform of the huge concrete FlaK tower, raised high above the city in order to give an unrestricted field of fire. His gun and the other three of the battery were grouped around the Kommandogerät 36 director, which still relied on optical height and range setting in view of the intense jamming of the radar directors by the attacking Eloka aircraft.
The guns were the new 11 cm FlaK 43, developed from the 10.5 cm FlaK 39 by boring out the rifled barrel to create a smoothbored cannon designed to take the long, fin-stabilised Peenemünde Pfeilgeschoss arrow shells. These were not only fired at a much higher velocity of around 1,200 metres per second, but because of their shape did not slow down as quickly so reached the altitude of the bombers much sooner, greatly assisting accurate shooting.
The techs had been right about the fuzes, he thought. At first, the idea of using contact instead of time fuzes had seemed like madness, but as the techs pointed out, even the beautifully engineered clockwork fuzes were only accurate to half a percent. This meant that the vast majority of shells were bursting too high or low to do any damage, and in any case had to explode very close to the B-17s in order to bring them down. It was more effective to rely on direct hits, especially as this enabled smaller shells to be used which could be fired at much higher velocity. There had been some talk of tiny radar fuzes which would explode shells only when they were close enough to damage the target, but these were apparently all being reserved for the new anti-aircraft missiles just entering production.
The Unteroffizier looked hopefully at the sky. The cloud seemed to be clearing. Just a bit more and the oncoming bombers would get a warm reception!
The P-51 pilot was simmering with frustration. His magnificent Mustang, as the British who had ordered their development called them, was as far as he was concerned the best prop-engined fighter in the sky: fast, agile, hard-hitting and with tremendous range granted by the wonderful Packard-built Merlin engine and the lightweight underwing drop-tanks. He should have had mastery over anything the Luftwaffe could put up – but that was before those damned jets appeared. He had only managed to get one of the new planes in his gunsight and all he could achieve was one brief, long-range burst before the Messerschmitt sped away.
Still, his instructions were clear: stay with the bombers until well away from the target area, then as soon as the defending fighters had gone, go down and attack ground targets. ‘Shoot up anything that moves,’ his CO had said. ‘You never know what it might be adding to the Nazi war effort.’
The P-51 planed down through the thin layer of cloud, emerging over a rural landscape. Well ahead, the pilot could see movement – vehicles on a road.
He eased the controls, lining up with the road, watching the vehicles as they seemed to rush towards him. The shape of a bus sank into the gunsight and he pressed the firing button, the Mustang juddering as the six fifties hammered in response. Seventy heavy machine gun bullets per second ripped up the road behind the bus, then tore through it. The pilot was vaguely aware of the bus swerving and turning over, bodies spilling from it, then the second vehicle was in his sights – a tanker! The bullets tore through it, then the incendiaries took effect with a devastating explosion. The P-51 bucked violently in the blast, then was knocked sideways. He had been hit – some debris had smashed into the plane! The pilot climbed hard, anxiously scanning gauges. Ominously, the oil pressure reading was falling rapidly – a glance in the mirror showed a plume of white smoke. It was instantly clear that he wasn’t going to make it back.
The pilot nursed the plane carefully, turning to head back to the border. The engine note roughened, rattled in a final effort, then abruptly stopped. The sudden silence was chilling. The pilot hastily pulled back the cockpit canopy, undid his straps and heaved himself out as the plane began its final dive. He tumbled for a few seconds, then gasped in relief as the par
achute opened.
He looked around as the swinging motion reduced, and uneasily saw that his turn had taken him close to where the vehicles he had strafed still burned. As he approached the ground a small crowd of people converged on him. He landed with the approved roll, unclipped the harness, then rapidly raised his arms as he heard the angry voices. Arms seized him, fists punched. He was dragged rapidly over the field, frozen with panic at the hostility burning from the people. He suddenly stopped and the crowd parted. He was in front of the bus. His burst of fire had riddling it like a colander. Bodies sprawled in the wreckage, lay beside the road. They seemed surprisingly small. The crowd forced him closer, their unintelligible voices a scream of accusation and hatred. Children, he thought numbly. They were all children.
‘I didn’t know!’ He yelled. ‘I didn’t know!’ He was still yelling as they dragged him to the roadside tree. His own parachute harness was suddenly produced and roughly knotted around his neck. He kicked out desperately as his feet left the ground. As he swayed above them, his last sight was of a sea of faces filled with bitter fury and contempt. I really didn’t know, he thought, and died.
‘They won’t be able to keep that up for much longer.’ Peter’s voice was sombre as the Oversight Committee clustered round the table, studying the latest reports from the Eighth Air Force. The number of B-17s shot down in the last three raids had reached an alarming fifteen per cent. The escort fighters were almost powerless in keeping the new Messerschmitt jets away from the bomber formations and were taking losses from defending fighters as they tried to attack the jets near their bases. In cloudy weather the bombing was relatively ineffective, in clearer skies the FlaK defences were formidable.
THE FORESIGHT WAR Page 32
