Bombing Run Read online

  BOMBING RUN

  Richard Townshend Bickers

  © Richard Townshend Bickers 2014

  Richard Townshend Bickers has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  First published 1986 by Robert Hale Ltd.

  This edition published by Endeavour Press Ltd in 2014.

  Table of Contents

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Extract from My Enemy Came Nigh by Richard Townsend Bickers

  One

  When the first Wellington came back to Brinstead the watchers’ quiet murmur swelled to a hum of excitement and relief.

  This was the station’s first operation since the war began three weeks ago, and earlier daylight attacks against enemy shipping by other Wellington, Hampden and Blenheim squadrons had suffered heavy casualties.

  The crowd had gathered on the tarmac apron in front of the two hangars and around the control tower; at the side of the airfield where the squadron’s aircraft were dispersed; and along the road on which stood the Parachute and Fire sections, the stores and Sick Quarters.

  The commentary grew louder when the waiting men heard strange notes syncopating with the familiar drone of the throttled-back twin engines: a whistling and fluting, the booming organ sound of wind rushing through holes and tears in the fabric of wings and fuselage made by Flak and fighters.

  The group captain in command of R.A.F. Brinstead and the wing commander commanding the squadron, and a few others who had served on the Western Front in the Great War, recognised the soughing, screeching and howling. The rents and gouges that caused them were no new sight to them.

  The Wellington taxied to dispersal and the ambulance raced after it. The group captain’s and wing commander’s cars, pennants fluttering on the offside mudguards, followed.

  Silence fell when the watchers saw dead and wounded being carried from the Wimpey.

  The second Wimpey came sliding into view through the haze of a warm afternoon, a few minutes later, to dumb anxiety. The third appeared, crabbing, one wing low, an engine feathered. It landed heavily, lurched, swung, and clattered and creaked as it made for its place in the dispersal line.

  A three-ton lorry with a winch rushed along the perimeter track.

  Wheldon, standing outside the squadron’s hutted workshops, watched the winch lift what was left of an air gunner from a shattered rear turret and another body from wreckage amidships where the astro dome had been.

  He heard the grating and gasping of a man retching. Looking round, he saw Vachell, his second pilot, vomiting. The sour stench drifted to him a moment later.

  Half an hour after the last Wellington landed, the crowd dispersed. It was obvious that no more of the six that had taken off five hours ago would be returning.

  Wheldon looked at his second dicky. ‘Coming, Tony?’

  Vachell was pale and his face was sweaty. ‘I don’t think I feel like anything to eat.’

  ‘Don’t be bloody silly: it’s just what you need, after emptying your guts.’ Wheldon felt like adding that as several members would be missing from high tea in the sergeants’ mess, there might even be second helpings. Tough directness was the best way to deal with excessive sensitivity, he believed.

  He strode off towards the mess, supposing that Vachell was following. Ufland, who had been navigating for him for the past couple of months, broke away from a group of other observers. His red and prominent nose twitched. ‘Looks like a dicey do, Pete.’

  ‘Maybe they pranged Jerry even worse, Beaky.’

  ‘Perhaps the others had to divert… some of them, anyway.’

  ‘Could be.’ Not a hope, thought Wheldon.

  Vachell had caught up. He seemed to speak with difficulty. ‘B Flight’s turn next, then.’

  Wheldon did not think this trite remark worth answering, but didn’t want to be too hard on his second dicky. ‘Might not be our turn, though, Tony.’

  ‘Want to bet?’

  Beaky Ufland said ‘We’ll be on, all right.’

  They were bound to be on the Battle Order when B Flight was called on for its first op. Flight Sergeant Wheldon could hardly be left off: he was one of the best pilots on the squadron.

  It awed Vachell to fly with such a polished captain and made him nervous because of his own defects. But it gave him confidence about his prospects of survival to know that he was in such expert hands. He needed confidence more than ever after what he had just seen.

  Peter Wheldon’s record, extracted piecemeal over the six months that they had been crewed together, was as well known to him as his own. Wheldon had left grammar school at sixteen to become a Halton apprentice. A fitter-armourer on a bomber squadron, he had applied for pilot training at the age of twenty. And now, four years later, he was a Wellington captain and as good a navigator as any specialist observer.

  Wheldon, at that moment, was thinking, as he frequently did, how luckily timed the outbreak of war had been for him. Under the ungenerous scheme forced on Air Ministry by the Treasury, other ranks released from their ground trade to remuster to pilot and promoted to sergeant had to revert to their former trade and rank after five years. In another twelve months he would have been a ground-basher again, although probably promoted to corporal. Of course the regulations might have been changed; or he might have been given a commission.

  The latter was not unlikely. The Royal Air Force was the least snobbish of the Services: grammar school and public school boys stood an equal chance of admission to the College at Cranwell or appointment to a short service commission. Being commissioned from the ranks was not so easily achieved in peacetime, but was within the grasp of a man of his calibre. Now, if he survived the first few months of war, getting his commission should be a piece of cake. Even with a squadron commander like Wing Commander Norton, it should be fairly jammy.

  He would have preferred a more rugged type than Vachell as his second pilot. But he didn’t really care much what sort of chap sat in the right hand seat. His own competence was adequate for two. He needed an observer only to find their way when he was too busy himself and to aim the bombs. A wireless operator was necessary to obtain fixes and bearings and receive and send signals, and to man the front guns. A rear gunner was essential to protect them from astern attack. But he wished he could dispense with everyone. Human presence came between him and the sheer unadulterated joy he found in simply flying.

  Vachell did not rate highly in his opinion on any count save one: he was a beautiful batsman and had played for his county Second Eleven. That, and the fact that he had been to a public school, however obscure, tucked away in a corner of the West Country, outside which it was unknown, should have guaranteed him a commission when he tried to join as a short service officer. Instead the interviewing board had turned him down and he had come in the hard way. Wheldon allowed him a mite of grudging respect for being so keen to fly that he had enlisted, but flying in peacetime, even with the frequency of fatal accidents, was one facet of the job and flying in the face of enemy fire was a totally different one.

  They all loved to fly: he and Sergeant Vachell and Sergeant Ufland; and the two erks who completed the crew. The erks might even be the most enamoured of the sheer delight to be found in being airborne, considering what they had to go through to achieve it. Airmen of almost any trade could volunteer to be air gunners. If fortunate, they would be sent on a five-week gunnery course; if not, they would have to learn as best they could, when the squadron was loaned a towing aircraft with a drogue for a day now and then. When q
ualified, an A.G. sported a winged brass bullet on his sleeve and earned an extra sixpence a day. But it was not a full-time occupation and he had to carry on with his ground duties in the intervals of flying. Shortly before the war all air gunners had been ordered to qualify as wireless operators, but not many had yet been able to. As a rule they were further cut off from the other aircrew by not being permanently allotted to a particular captain. Even second pilots and observers, on some squadrons, were not formally crewed up in a regular team. Now that they were at war, these loose arrangements were being made firmer, but there was still a suggestion of improvisation about the composition of a crew for each flight. Vachell and Ufland now flew permanently with Wheldon.

  One factor united them all, and made their relationships closer than if they were in the Army or Navy; it gave the R.A.F. its individuality and unique spirit: what they all wanted to do above everything else was to fly. Very few, even of those who graduated from Cranwell, put the pursuit of promotion as their main reason for joining.

  Vachell, despite his disclaimer, ate well and cheered up at tea. ‘We should be getting some girls on the station soon.’ He looked at Wheldon with a faint grin.

  ‘Waafs,’ said Wheldon. ‘All right in Sick Quarters: I’d rather have my temperature taken and my meals brought to me in bed by a Waaf than an erk, any day. And I suppose they’ll be all right packing parachutes or store-bashing. But who wants women all over the place all the time? The Service is a man’s life. An R.A.F. station is a male preserve. Besides, half the fun in girls is having to go off camp looking for ‘em. Anyway, you wait and see: it’s only the no-hopers who’ll be rushing to get into uniform. The good-lookers would rather stay civvies and be able to wear what they like and have their hair done however they want, and use any kind of make-up they fancy.’

  ‘I reckon the ones who are really keen on men… looking for it—know what I mean?—are the ones who’ll rush to the recruiting office. Mark my words: there’ll be hot pants swarming all over the station before long.’ Ufland sounded hopeful.

  Vachell had apparently forgotten his queasiness and the sight of mangled bloody flesh and limbless, headless bodies. He was smiling broadly now. ‘I don’t think I can endorse either of your opinions. My sister has just joined the W.A.A.F. and I can assure you she’s damn pretty and she isn’t looking for it.’

  ‘Nothing personal.’ From the way Wheldon said it, it was clear that, as usual, he didn’t give a damn if he was believed or not.

  ‘No, no.’ Ufland gave Vachell a slightly uneasy glance.

  ‘That’s all right. I hope you’re right, Beaky. Nothing I’d like better than a nympho invasion of Brinstead. We’re going to be too busy, soon, to go hunting around Lincoln and Scunthorpe for it. Much more convenient to have it on the spot. Besides, it’ll be more comfortable than having to do it in a field or the back of a car; and cheaper than having to pay for a sticky weekend in a pub.’

  ‘Why?’ Beaky showed interest.

  ‘Sneak into their billets. Or sneak them into ours.’

  ‘What? With a station commander like Groupie Kirkpatrick and a bastard like we’ve got in charge of the S.Ps?’ The Service Police at Brinstead were inspired by the relentless zeal of a terrifying flight sergeant. ‘Wouldn’t surprise me if they’re all issued with chastity belts.’

  ‘Tony’s bloody good at picking locks,’ Wheldon said. ‘Who’s coming to the Red Lion?’

  Girls… beer. Neither was in the forefront of the thoughts of them. They would pile into Wheldon’s seven-year-old Morris Oxford two-seater and drive the couple of miles to the village. They would play darts and drink a few pints. They would join in chaffing the new barmaid, whom nobody had yet succeeded in taking out. And all the time, the thought that would be insistently present was about what had happened out there over the North Sea. Had the three missing kites been hacked down by Flak or had it been by fighters? And had the Wimpeys sunk, or even hit, any enemy warships?

  *

  In the crew room next morning their questions were answered; in part. It was a long narrow room, brick-built to the hangar wall facing the airfield, crowded with lockers for flying gear, chairs, a few beds, a couple of tables, a coke stove.

  The survivors of the previous day’s attack had been long at de-briefing. The sergeants among them had not returned to their mess until after the dining-room had emptied. They had kept silently to themselves, and their comrades had left them alone; knowing that questions would be curtly rebuffed. Now, they were willing to talk; a little. Even so, they congregated together: officers and sergeants. The air gunners were not to be found in the crew room, but in the hangars, the workshops or the armoury, back at their ground jobs. The cookhouse staff had grumbled because they had come late to tea: and fed them grudgingly on luke warm Welsh rarebit and hunks of bread with margarine and thin plum jam.

  Wheldon, Vachell and Ufland listened to the disjointed reminiscences that came from the two officers and four sergeants.

  ‘No cloud cover at all…’

  ‘Twenty miles off course when we made landfall…’

  ‘Had to stooge along the Jerry coast…’

  ‘Gave them plenty of warning…’

  ‘Bags of time to scramble their fighters…’

  ‘Saw a dozen ships of various sizes…’

  ‘A cruiser and some destroyers… mine-sweepers…’

  ‘Too many bloody Flak ships, boy…’

  ‘Flak opened up at two miles range…’

  ‘The light stuffs bloody horrible…’

  ‘Heavy stuff chucking us all over the place when it burst within a hundred yards…’

  ‘Then the One-o-nines came in… eight of ‘em…’

  ‘Then six One-one-oes… or maybe eight…’

  ‘Flak got Joe… Fighters got the other two…’

  There had been six more Wellingtons on the raid, from each of two squadrons at other stations.

  ‘Flak got three altogether, as far as I could see…’

  ‘The 109s and 110s bagged four or five between them…’

  ‘That was actually over the target… they chased us when we turned for home…’

  ‘Saw two Wimpeys ditch…’

  ‘Reckon we lost ten altogether…’

  ‘Bloody stupid… no cloud cover…’

  ‘Met got the wind wrong over there…’

  ‘Leading observer had his finger in, too… twenty-mile navigation error…’

  ‘Might have had a u/s compass…’

  ‘We got two 109s… combined fire from the rear gunners…’

  ‘The others got a 109 and a 110 apiece, as far as I could tell…’

  ‘Bloody shambles, anyway…’

  ‘Still, Jerry won’t forget it… lost six…’

  ‘Nobody hit a damn thing…’

  ‘A few near misses…’

  ‘All that way to dump bombs in the ditch… Christ!’

  ‘Bloody shambles…’

  Wheldon was surprised to find that the sorry tale filled him with envy. These men had experienced something that was beyond imagination, however closely one listened to their laconic descriptions. And they had survived. They were real aircrew, and what was he but a driver… a man who didn’t yet know himself…’

  He looked at Vachell. Vachell was biting his lip, his right forefinger was picking at the cuticle of the thumb. His eyes were staring out of the window, at the sky.

  Wheldon looked at Ufland; who caught his glance and grimaced.

  There was an atmosphere of contrived indifference abroad. Wheldon knew it well and it was, he believed, the most valuable lesson he had learned and attribute he had acquired during the three years he had been on the squadron. He recognised it for what it was: the cavalier style, the style and spirit of one social group. There was a kind of artful naturalness about it. The ripples and heavings of apprehension aroused by the survivors’ accounts, despite the intimidation that must be at work on every mind, were not apparent. Instead there was a st
eely intransigence, a protean adaptability, a mockingly cheerful detachment from the awfulness of an enemy whom they all despised.

  *

  Wing Commander Norton spent little time in the crew room. Office work occupied most of his day, punctuated by the ritual of hearing charges and awarding punishments, visiting the hangar and workshops, the Operations Room and Intelligence section, conferring with his flight commanders and his Armament and Engineering officers, the squadron Adjutant, the station commander; and the squadron Medical officer, with whom he shared concern for the mental as well as physical health of his air crews.

  He did not need to frequent the crew room to know what was being said there this morning. He had imposed no constraints on the men who had flown yesterday’s op. There was no point in concealing reality. If a squadron’s morale was not proof against a blunt recital of the unpleasantnesses of an air battle, it was badly led and those who were affected should have been posted away long ago.

  He felt bad about not having been on the show himself; but that had been on specific orders from the Air Officer Commanding the Group. He had joined the Royal Flying Corps as an eighteen-year-old in 1916, shortly after squadron commanders had been forbidden to cross enemy lines at all: an injunction frequently ignored, but never without retribution if discovered. In those days he had flown scouts, later called fighters. The fighter attitude had influenced him for life and he esteemed a dashing pilot more highly than he regarded a technically impeccable one. He trained his crews to maintain faultless close formation and to make changes of formation with parade ground precision. Yet he would sooner see an exhibition of daring and high spirits than conscientious and immaculate aerial drill. If he officially had to chide someone for skimming so low across the airfield that everyone had to fall flat, for roaring through a hangar in a Tiger Moth or Magister, for hurtling between the hangars with only a few feet to spare at either wingtip, for almost scraping the roofs, he privately approved of him.

  Yesterday’s six had been led by a flight lieutenant, the deputy commander of A Flight. His aircraft was the first to be shot down. The wing commander was proud of the way in which the flight lieutenant had died. It had not been a waste of his life and his crew’s, as others saw it. He had left a fine example to the squadron.