Operation Thunderflash

by Richard Townsend Bickers

  He’d have to bring Ivy in on this one: she was razor-sharp at detecting the symptoms of illicit romance. She would be tickled rather than disapproving, for she was fond of Margaret and had never liked Leatham even though he had taken such care not to denigrate him to her.

  *

  “I want twelve crews, six from each flight, trained for a special job,” Leatham told his two Flight Commanders. “Donk, I want you in on it.” He turned to the other Flight Commander and said, “Detail your six best crews, but I won’t want you to fly the op. You can look after the shop while Donk and I are busy.”

  That was all, for the time being. Bracken’s crew, which had quickly established its right to be regarded as potentially one of the best, was among those Moakes chose from his flight.

  When he had approved the list of names, Leatham enlarged on his requirements.

  “We’ve got to learn to fly among mountains, really high ones, with complete confidence. We’re going to practise over the Alps. Group are laying on some sorties to Italy and on the way back we can enjoy ourselves by nipping in and out among the peaks. I want the crews to grow accustomed to high altitude, to cold, and to finding their way round in all sorts of weather. And they must learn to fly so low over the ground that there are peaks towering high above them. They must learn how to cope with all the different air conditions one meets over snow and ice and among high mountains and deep valleys.”

  Moakes refused to let himself be drawn into any criticism or any show of curiosity. All he said was, “The types will be pleased about Italy, sir.” If Leatham wanted to infer that he was implying that they would not enjoy any of the rest of it, that was up to him.

  They flew their first raid on Italy in mid-October. Leatham boldly took the lead and Moakes brought up the rear. The ten others flew spaced out at short intervals.

  Moakes had seen the Himalayas and the Hindu Kush. He had no particular taste for mountains: they put him in mind of nasty episodes on the North-West Frontier, when the crews of aircraft on reconnaissance or bombing against rebel Pathans had suffered unnameable tortures if they were forced down. It brought to mind also the unnerving accuracy of the tribesmen’s rifle fire at low-flying, slow biplanes. Whatever this mysterious show for which they were training, he was sure it portended no good.

  Bracken had seen the Pennines and didn’t think much of them: gloomier than the Fens and the Lincolnshire and Norfolk flatlands, he reckoned. But he was curious to see if the Alps, with snow on them, were less forbidding and gloomy. Photographs of great mountain ranges under snow had always attracted him.

  Bruce Donaldson was enraptured. “Of course they’ll not be so fine as the Grampians, “ he declared, “but they should be a bonny sight.”

  That they certainly were. The long run across France first provided an absorbing new navigational exercise for all the crews, and when at last the Alps crept into sight on the port bow both Moakes and Bracken were entranced by their beauty. Emerging in soft outline, snow-capped summits shimmering in the moonlight, the great ranges looked harmless and inviting. As they came closer and grew in size, they took on more forbidding aspects. At closest quarters the vast expanses of barren, jagged rock caught the attention more than the smooth and gentle snowfields.

  The air gunners complained of the cold, especially in their hands. The navigators and wireless operators complained of the weird effects of the mountains on their equipment. The flight engineers fussed about the effect of cold on their engines. The gunners complained some more; about the danger of their gun mechanisms freezing. Everyone complained about the cold and the long hours of breathing oxygen.

  Their target was a group of factories on the outskirts of Milan. It was a long time since either the RAF or the USAAF had raided Milan, and the defences were lethargic. It was not until after the first two aircraft had bombed that any searchlights were switched on or any anti-aircraft fire began to pepper the sky with forlorn-looking flashes. The fire thickened and the searchlights became more active by the time the last three Lancasters dropped their loads; but the Italians were not a patch on the Germans, and those who had been compelled to man the defences were half-hearted: Italy had signed an Armistice with the Allies a few weeks before, and these Italians stranded in the north had no wish to go on fighting. Those gun sites which were manned by German gunners and searchlight crews were more accurate and quicker to react, but still it was a cushy raid.

  On their homeward run they disported themselves among the valleys and peaks, playing nip and tuck among the mighty crags, weaving down broad, twisting valleys with ridges frowning down on them, skimming over vast plains of snow which sloped gently under their wings. It was both beautiful and thrilling and they marvelled as their shadows, cast by the moon, raced over the white landscape close beneath them one instant, and, the next, were a mile below on the floor of some enormous chasm.

  Two nights later Leatham, showing unwonted enthusiasm, led a raid by six aircraft, all from B Flight, to Genoa. He returned looking ashen and cursing the flak and searchlights, which had obviously been strengthened by German troops.

  Three nights after that Moakes led his six A Flight crews to Turin.

  The crews, when they were first detailed for these raids on Italy, had looked forward to taking part in the shuttle raids that were going on: continuing the outward flight from Italy to North Africa, spending 36 hours there, then returning to England via some Italian target. Any stopover overseas was looked on as a great treat. It gave one the opportunity to enjoy a little warmth and sunshine, and to do some exotic shopping: fruit was high on the list, and crews who had the luck to stage through Gibraltar or any of the North African airfields returned loaded with melons, oranges, grapes and bananas: all rarities in wartime Britain: some, indeed, entirely unknown.

  These Lancaster crews, however, had no such luck. They were being trained to undertake long outward and return trips and to build up their stamina. They set out for Turin with the usual curiosity that attended any new target, but without much pleasure in the anticipation.

  The moon was waning and the mountains looked sinister rather than romantic and kindly.

  For a while, the few twinkling lights of neutral Switzerland they were able to see gave them the illusion of peace and normality but it was soon shattered.

  They were cruising at 25,000 ft. and there was ice on the wings, ice kept flying off the aeroplane and striking some part of it with an irritating thud and rattle. Ice formed on the windows, both outside and in. Their faces felt chapped and sore where they were not covered by their oxygen masks. The masks themselves chafed and felt heavy. They had to fight against drowsiness. The Lancaster’s heating system was supplemented by electrically heated flying suits and they wore several layers of clothing as well. It helped to keep them warm but made them feel unnaturally bulky and their movements cumbersome.

  When the engines, without warning, began to sound unsynchronised, Bracken felt a paradoxical relief: at last, something out of the ordinary to relieve the boredom.

  “What is it, Ron?” he asked at once.

  “Just checking, Skip.”

  The engines took on a distressed, whining note. The instruments showed no abnormality.

  “Engineer here, Skipper: can we go down a bit? The outside temperature’s cruel: I reckon the engines are just suffering from cold.”

  “Right, I’ll go down five thousand.”

  The engine note improved, but now they could see a mass of cloud over which they should have flown and would, at the lower altitude, have to fly through or around.

  “Hell’s bells,” said Bracken. “Nav.: please give me a course around this lot. I won’t risk severe icing by flying through it.”

  “Safe enough, Bill: we’re well above the peaks.”

  “Not enough margin: if we get severe icing we’ll lose more height.”

  “Here’s a new heading, then.” Compton gave the course and the Lancaster bore away to the southward.

  Bruce said, “I wond
er if the others are doing the same?”

  “Asking for trouble if they don’t,” replied Bracken.

  They skirted round the cloud bank, a towering, ugly, stormy black density of coiling menace, and resumed their original track. They would be late on target. Almost certainly everyone would be late: better that way, or any aircraft attacking on its own would attract the entire attention of the defences.

  The defence system around Turin was unattractive. Bracken remembered the briefing with distaste.

  “Fifteen minutes to target,” said Compton.

  Soon after, the first reaction on the ground brought clumps of flak all over the place. Turin was ringed by anti-aircraft batteries and they were wide awake tonight.

  Moakes, leading the attack, thought to himself that it was no wonder Leatham had come back from Genoa looking so white about the gills. The Germans had taken over with a vengeance and industrial Italy and the Italian ports were being defended with determination. He wondered what special job they were practising for: if they kept on like this, they would not have all the chosen twelve crews available shortly. The sky all around was paved with bursting shells and his Lanc. was acting like a wild bronco. He hoped the others had diverted around the storm clouds. Strict wireless silence was a wise precaution but he hated being unable to look after his boys by sending them instructions.

  He dropped his first flares and the ground leaped into clear relief, the target well illuminated.

  He dropped his bombs and watched them burst, took his photograph and climbed away to orbit the target and watch the rest of the force’s work.

  One by one, in quick succession, they came in, attacked using his fires as their aiming mark, and went on their way.

  Good lads: they had maintained their time separation, which meant they had all followed more or less the same circuitous path.

  It was time to go. Hanging around here was asking for trouble: the searchlights had almost found him several times and even above the bombing level there had been a lot of flak.

  He had just set course towards France when an outbreak of tracer fire a few thousand feet below and ahead caught his eye.

  His bomb-aimer reported it at the same instant.

  The tracer was travelling in two directions: whichever of his flight was under attack was putting up a good show. He wished he could work out who it was.

  “Captain to crew: I’m going down to lend a hand. Fingers out, gunners: there’ll be more fighters down there.” Moakes dived his aircraft towards the patch of blackness where the shooting was still going on, wondering whom it was he was going to find down there.

  *

  Margaret slept uneasily. She and her husband had contrived, even in their private lives, to maintain a mutual cordiality for almost four years, but he had been coldly sardonic for the past couple of months and she was sure he suspected her adultery; again.

  She had been drawn more deeply into her involvement with Bill than she had ever intended. It had started with instant attraction: that dangerous combination of the urge to be protective — to mother him, she confessed to herself wryly — and to rape him. He was attractive to women without being at all aware of it; this modesty and slight shyness made his sexuality all the more appealing and she wondered that some older woman had not already seduced him. But, she knew, there was small opportunity for boys who spent eight months of the year in boarding school and whose parents almost certainly did not number among their friends anyone who would initiate their adolescent or inexperienced-bachelor sons! That was not the conventional middle class British scene.

  From that beginning, when she had intended a little fun, a titillating fling, a spicy adventure, the thrill of getting away with a lover under Tim’s very nose, the physical gratification that was so important to her, the satisfaction of knowing that she was revenging herself on a vain and selfish husband who had dishonourably deluded her: from a beginning that had been based on all those motives, she had plunged, to her utter amazement, headlong into love with Bill. She was in love with him before they went to bed together for the first time; and after their first ecstasy, that very first night when Tim was away at Group, she had parted from Bill with the admission to herself that she loved him. It was absurd but it was true and it was magical.

  It made her weep sometimes although she was not a woman to whom tears came easily.

  She cried from pity for herself and for him. Their ultimate parting, which had to come, whenever fate decided it must, would be no poetical sweet sorrow for her. It would be the ultimate, undiluted agony. She knew that, for him, it would be deeply hurtful too: unless...and this thought invariably brought tears...unless it ended with his death.

  Margaret was beginning to believe that she had developed a special sensitivity, an instinct, which warned her when Bill was in danger.

  Twice she had woken from sound sleep, full of alarm, wide awake on the instant, her heart hammering. She had no visions, no dreams, no frightening mental images of his peril: each time there had just been a piercing intuition that death had passed him close by.

  On neither occasion had Bill said anything about a misadventure, of course. Nor had Tim, the first time. It was only when, after Bill had made love to her with a frenzy that she knew arose from desperate need to subjugate or banish some grievous worry, to immerse himself in delight and drive out whatever devil had perched on his shoulder, only then that she had sweetly and with infinite skill drawn from him a few reluctant confidences about “a rather dicey do” and “shook us all a bit “. He had not mentioned the place, and she had not cared where it had happened: but it had dwelt in his mind and she was proud and happy that she had been able to assuage his fears.

  The second time, she was already awake and trembling from some vague apprehension, when, through her open window, she had heard the thunderous roar of an explosion. Leaping from bed and drawing the curtain she had seen the sky lit with the flickering pink glow of a blazing fire; in the direction of the airfield. She had sat huddled in a chair for several minutes, whimpering and shaking; then gone to her sitting room and poured a glass of brandy to dull her imagination.

  At breakfast next morning Tim had, regarding her with irony, said, “Spot of excitement on the station during the night.”

  Taken unprepared, she had jerked an anxious look at him, feeling the pink spot burning on each cheek which had been a lifelong embarrassment, betrayer of her anxiety. “What happened? I heard an explosion. I went to the window and saw a fire burning in the distance.”

  Cruelly he said, watching her, “Bill Bracken.”

  Margaret dropped the coffee cup she had been raising with deliberate unconcern. It broke, spilling coffee on tablecloth and carpet, and she leaped to her feet glad to have an excuse to hide her shock: she bent swiftly to mop up the mess from the carpet with her napkin.

  Crouched below the level of the table, she asked, her face hidden from him, “What happened?”

  “His crew shot down an enemy intruder right over the middle of the airfield.” Unfathomable relief swept through her and she bit her lip to prevent herself from trembling. “They shot it down in the circuit, I should say, but it landed bang in the middle. Luckily, well clear of the runways.”

  She emerged from hiding, rang the bell for someone to come to clean up and fetch her another cup and saucer, and said, in control of herself, “What excitement! It didn’t interfere with your activities, then?”

  “Hardly at all: which was just as well, because young Bracken and a couple of others were in a bit of a hurry to get down.”

  She did not give him the satisfaction of asking him to amplify this.

  Later that day when she saw Bill she said at once, “I hear your crew distinguished themselves last night?”

  “We got lucky, as the Yanks say. Nothing to do with me: all the credit goes to my gunners.”

  Still later, in intimate privacy, running her fingers softly up and down his naked spine, she whispered, “Someone said you were in trouble
last night...before the intruder attacked you...was it bad, darling?”

  With mock severity, he said, “Careless talk, darling. Yes, it had been a bit off, actually...rather a long trip.”

  Margaret had no difficulty in supplying the rest. She knew about those long trips and was familiar with names like Berlin, Stuttgart, Munich and Hanover.

  Now, tonight, she had awakened again, sitting up in bed, knees raised and arms clasped around them, thinking of Bill while all sorts of frightening pictures haunted her mind.

  *

  Moakes’s dive into the fight was as dramatic as the nick-of-time arrival of the United States Cavalry to the rescue of beleagured palefaces about to be annihilated by Red Indians.

  His Lancaster swept down on a Me 110 whose pilot and gunner were as astonished by this intervention as were the crew of the Lancaster under attack.

  His front gunner got in a long burst while Moakes, telling himself with grim humour that at last he knew what it must be like to fly a Spitfire, turned in a classic curve of pursuit to deliver a high quarter attack. The gunner protecting the Messerschmitt’s rear was killed by the first burst, his startled, brief attempt to fight off the attacker silenced before he could do any damage. The pilot, finking violently aside, exposed himself to the combined fire of Moakes’s rear and mid-upper gunners. Flames roared out of the enemy fighter’s wings and it spun away, to erupt into a cascade of fire and sparks as its fuel exploded.

  The glare lit up both Lancasters and Moakes saw the letter U on the side of the other one.

  They flew home together.

  Margaret passed the morning and early afternoon tense with suppressed anxiety. At breakfast, her husband asked her why she was even less talkative than usual and why she looked so peaky. She replied shortly that she had slept badly,

  “You’re a doctor,” he told her cynically. “Why don’t you prescribe something for yourself? A sleeping powder or a tonic.”

  Eleven