Bombs Gone Read online

  He interrogated the formation-leader first, an uncompromising flight-lieutenant.

  “What was the weather like?”

  “Not much like the Met man had forecast.”

  Pause for general laughter; and grim looks on the faces of the station-commander and his immediate satellites.

  “What went wrong?” The I.O. asked.

  “Cloud base came down to five hundred instead of a thousand feet, there was rain over the target area and we had a headwind on the way back.” The formation-leader paused, then added generously: “Otherwise, exactly as predicted.”

  More laughter followed this and the I.O. hastened on.

  “You damaged the pocket battleship and one destroyer?”

  “We didn’t. Furchtbar caught a bit of a packet when one Wimpey crashed on her with a full bomb-load and blew up, and the destroyer suffered a bit of no good when another one scraped her masts and bridge after bombing, and missing, and crashed into the sea. And promptly sank with its crew still on board.”

  The group-captain’s face had been turning from brick-red to puce during this recital and he now butted in.

  “Didn’t anyone’s bombs hit any of the vessels?”

  The flight-lieutenant looked at him. “We found out, the hard way, sir, that a destroyer can turn like a dodgem car. My bombs missed. I saw some strikes, which the crews who scored hits will tell you about — if they’re here! — but they didn’t do much real damage. The bombs are too light, for one thing, and with an eleven-and-a-half-second delay they have time to bounce off before they explode.”

  The group-captain panned his gaze around the group and asked, “Who did score hits?”

  Two of the aircraft captains said, “We did, sir.”

  “You’d better debrief them next,” the group-captain told the Intelligence officer.

  “Yes, sir.” The I.O. looked at the formation-leader again. “What about the ships’ defences?”

  “It’s all a fairy tale that destroyers of that class don’t carry ack-ack, old boy. They bristle with pom-poms like quills on a porcupine. And heavier stuff as well.”

  The I.O. looked stricken. “Duff gen from Group, I’m afraid.”

  Put it in the letters of condolence to the families of the forty men who didn’t come back and the three who came back dead, Ridley thought. Sorry we made fools of ourselves, you can explain, but that was the best information available. It’s bound to make them feel better.

  The interrogation continued for an hour and then the crews went to their belated lunches: with empty stomachs but no appetite.

  Ridley was left, once again, with the feeling that there were grave errors in the theories about bombing that had been based on out-dated experience and notions. And that unless some better means of weather-forecasting, better armament and more reliable information about the enemy were evolved, this was going to be a very short war. Not short in total duration, but short for each airman who fought it: individual expectation of life could not stretch beyond a few weeks, at this rate.

  He was only five months past his twentieth birthday and the realisation made him feel bad enough. He wondered what the 18- and 19-year-olds on the two squadrons were thinking.

  Two

  Reinert saw the last Wellington disappear in the heavy rain and into the low cloud over the killing ground — or, more accurately, sea area — and turned his Me 110 away in a steep bank to fly round the oily, wreckage-strewn patch of water again.

  He did not feel sorry for the British aircrews, but he respected their courage; and although he thought they had only got what they deserved he admitted to some compassion for the hopelessness of their attempt. Daylight raids, unescorted by fighters, were sheer lunacy. Evidently the R.A.F.’s pundits had calculated that if bombers flew a tight formation their combined weight of fire would be heavy enough to protect them from fighter attack. He had seen, and heard of, some astonishing reversals of logic and the expected already in this war; but it was nevertheless clear that bombing missions by day, without escort, were not made safe by sheer numbers and rigid discipline in formation-keeping.

  The R.A.F. seemed to base its theories on illogical exceptions, successes against all odds, instead of on predictability.

  He knew, and his comrades knew, that one of their Me 110s against one Wellington put the odds greatly in their favour. The Me 110 had two 20mm cannon and two 7.92mm machine-guns in the nose, with an air-gunner and another machine-gun in a rear cockpit. It could also fly at 562Km. (349 miles) per hour. The nose and tail gun turrets of the Wellington could traverse only some 60 degrees to either side, which left it open to easy attack from abeam. With its superior speed, the Me 110 could fly rings round it and attack with safety. Moreover cannon shells inflicted terrible damage compared with any machine-gun.

  Reinert also knew that one Me 110 should be able to deal with three Ansons, Coastal Command reconnaissance “Badewannen” (bathtubs) which ambled along at a maximum of 188 m.p.h. and carried only two .303 guns: one fixed to fire forward and another in a dorsal turret. Yet four aircraft of his own Staffel had attacked three Ansons and two had been shot down, while the Ansons all got away although two were badly damaged.

  He himself had taken part in an attack on a formation of Hampdens and Blenheims which the Me 110s and 109s outnumbered and, although half the British force was destroyed, so was half the German, and his own aircraft sustained many bullet-holes.

  Those were the exceptions. The victory of the Ansons was a freak: their crews must have been exceptionally skilful and certainly the pilots and gunners in the 110s had not been among the best the Staffel had.

  The generality was that the Tommy bombers came out on their own and the Messerschmitt Emils like him hacked them down. Because the enemy had, to date, attacked only ships and kept well clear of land targets, there was always the navy’s own flak to hack them down as well.

  He held his steep bank, circling the damaged ships, the sinking tug that was being towed by one of her sisters in an attempt to get her into shallow water before she touched bottom. Looking down, he saw iridescent whorls of petrol and oil on the sea. Bits of aircraft drifted among them. He counted bodies in bright yellow life-vests — he had heard the R.A.F. called them after the opulently endowed film star, Mae West, and thought it a good joke — one ... two ... there were altogether five that he could see. All inert. Nobody in any of the Wellingtons that had been shot down had a chance of survival. He looked more closely. There were two other bodies in yellow life-jackets, but in Luftwaffe uniform this time. Both dead also. He levelled off and went down to a few feet above the surface.

  To his air-gunner, he said, “Try to get a look at their faces. They may be ours.”

  “Jawohl, Herr Leutnant.” Morbid bugger, thought Obergefreiter Lent.

  Reinert’s voice again. “Isn’t that Leutnant Schmidt?”

  “Yes, Herr Leutnant ... looks like him.”

  “Goddamned Tommies.”

  “Ja, Herr Leutnant.” Glad it wasn’t us, thought the corporal gunner.

  “I don’t recognise the other one. Must be a one-oh-nine Emil.”

  “Must be, yes.”

  “No survivors. The rest of our lads must have gone down with their aeroplanes.”

  “To be expected, from the height we were at.” Two hundred feet. Anyone hit slammed straight in, and down like a U-boat. Those two had no business floating up. Now there’d be all the rigmarole of a funeral parade. Damned nuisance they were.

  They were last but one to land. The other crews stood and watched: not so much counting them in as watching their landings critically. Reinert had no qualms. He had not been hit, so there could be no doubt about his wheels coming down. He wouldn’t be giving them a show this time, like when he had had to belly-land on the grass beside the runway thanks to bullets in his hydraulics fired by a Wellington front gunner.

  By the time he and Lent had switched everything off and climbed out, the last one was down. They walked over to the group on
the tarmac.

  The Intelligence officer raised his voice: “How many this time, Kanone?”

  The others laughed to hear Werner Reinert called an ace. He was on his way to being one, with at least one victory each time the Staffel was in a fight. He was so embarrassed when people said things like that that of course it was just the sort of crack everyone made at his expense. Tall and hefty, flaxen-haired and pink-cheeked, he looked even younger than his 20 years.

  “One,” he said. “And that was as much Lent’s shooting as mine.”

  The Obergefreiter grinned at the other N.C.O. air-gunners and mimed aiming a gun and firing. He was a heavy-set farm lad, as tall as his pilot, and had grown up with sporting guns in his hand. At 19 years of age, his weather-beaten face made him seem older than Reinert.

  Oberleutnant Falch, the Staffelkapitän, said, “Let’s go into the crew room and hear everyone’s story.”

  Reinert joined Ebeling, who waited for him, and they strolled over to the Staffel’s rest-room together.

  “How did it go, Hans?” Reinert gave his friend a sharp glance. Ebeling’s swarthy features looked grim.

  “I was the first one back. Schuster was hit. Came back in a hell of a hurry, but it was no use. Poor devil bled to death.” He smacked a fist into his open palm. “I feel awful about it. He was a hell of a good gunner ... you know that ...”

  “Not your fault.”

  “Let’s go into town tonight and get blind.”

  Reinert reddened. “I’m taking Lotte to a show and dinner.”

  A smile flickered on Schuster’s lips. “I say, you really are smitten, aren’t you? That’s three nights in a row you’ll be seeing her. How long is it since you’ve had a night out with the boys?”

  “Why don’t you come along? Bring one of your harem: the most respectable one, please.”

  “All right, I will. If Lotte won’t mind.”

  Reinert grinned. “She won’t even notice you’re there: not when I’m around.”

  Ebeling gave a shout: “Hey, fellas: know what this boastful Lothario has just said? We ought to keep a special log-book for this kind of boast.” He repeated his friend’s line-shoot amid laughter and derisive comment.

  Oberleutnant Falch reclined in his chair, lit a cigarette and said, “Right, let’s hear all about it. I’ll tell you what I thought about that show for a start. First of all, the Navy were bloody dangerous. They were still chucking their flak at the Tommies when we went in. I saw one of the one-oh-nines get a direct hit and ... well, it just disintegrated. Someone has got to discipline those maniacs.”

  “I agree,” Reinert said. “I had to take as much evasive action in the first minute to avoid our own flak as to dodge the Wellingtons’ combined fire. The ships went on shooting as though we weren’t there.”

  “They seem to expect us to hold off and leave them to get all the glory for shooting the Tommies down,” Ebeling commented. “Are they too stupid to understand that it’s our job to stop the enemy before they can get close enough to bomb? The ships should restrict their shooting to directly overhead. And we’ll break off before we have to fly over them. But firing at bombers which are still a thousand metres away is absurd.”

  “I’ll have a word with the Gruppen Kommandeur,” the Staffel Kapitän told him. “What’s the general opinion about sending out a mixed force of one-one-ohs and one-oh-nines? Personally, I think the one-oh-nines are a damned nuisance: they get in our way.”

  There was a chorus of — prejudiced — agreement.

  Reinert said “It gets too competitive: they keep trying to pinch targets before we can get them in our sights: which means that we have to keep our eyes peeled for them as well as for the enemy. That’s distracting, and in the end we and they both suffer and the Tommies get the benefit.”

  “Absolutely right,” Falch nodded.

  “And the air-space gets so overcrowded,” said Ebeling, “I’m surprised we’ve only ever had two collisions. One of these days there’s going to be a real pile-up.”

  “Especially when the Navy opens up and we fighter Emils have to jink sharply away without time to look where we’re going,” Reinert added.

  “What about the effectiveness of the English bombers’ tactic of tight formation and mutual fire-support? What was the general opinion of the Wellingtons?”

  One of the pilots spoke up derisively. “Without an upper turret like the Blenheims and Hampdens, they’re hopeless.”

  “Just the same, they bagged two of ours and four one-oh-nines today,” the Staffel Kapitän reminded him. “But I agree with you in general: they haven’t much chance; and none at all when they’re forced to break up.”

  “Give them their due,” Reinert said, “they aren’t easy to break up. They go down, but they’re still holding formation.”

  “Exactly,” said Falch. “And that’s another reason for the one-oh-nines keeping their noses out of it. With our rear-firing guns, we’re much better able than they are to force the bombers to scatter.” He was not entirely correct, but rivalry between pilots who flew different types of aircraft was as rife in the Luftwaffe as in any other air force. When the pilots and gunners had got their grievances out of their systems, the Intelligence officer at last started his individual interrogations.

  *

  Reichmarschall Göring was highly conscious of the status of his officers. If the Luftwaffe were to be acknowledged as the elite of all Germany’s armed forces, its Commander-in-Chief insisted, officers must be seen to enjoy greater luxury than even that snobbish naval lot.

  Himself a man of gross habit of body, he overlooked no detail that would add to the comfort of his officers’ messes. It was a typical refinement (if such a term could correctly be applied to anything so vulgar) that the urinal stalls had a handle on each side which made them a convenient vomitorium. Any officer too drunk to stand without swaying and in danger of toppling into the latrine, could hang on while he sicked his guts out. And then went back to the bar for another skinful.

  This thoughtful provision did not figure in Reinert’s appreciation of the luxury in which he lived. He had never made such a pig of himself that he needed to take advantage of this particular convenience. But he did enjoy his spacious sleeping quarters, well sprung bed and the ministrations of his batman whose valeting made him feel as though he were either very rich or very high-born. In fact, his father was a lawyer in Lübeck and supported his wife and five children comfortably enough but modestly.

  Reinert, standing under a shower, conscious of a good day’s work well done and keenly anticipating the pleasures of the evening — a hero’s reward? he asked himself — felt his mind as much aglow with sensual satisfaction as his body under the hammering hot water and the final cold few seconds which so enlivened him.

  Towelling himself briskly, he joined in the conversation and the snatches of song that filled the big, steamy room. He felt healthy and alert and revelled in these moments of comradeship. The war, so far, had been nothing but the greatest fun. Tempered, admittedly, by the loss of a few of his friends; but by no means the gloomy business of constant danger which was the impression he had of the last war from all he had read and heard. His father had flown fighters in that holocaust and was reluctant to talk about it. When he had drunk enough and could be persuaded to reminisce, his memories were of aeroplanes catching fire at 15,000ft in the days when parachutes were not carried: and pilots shooting themselves in preference to being grilled alive or spread like jam over the ground if they lived until the impact. Casualties, it appeared, had been daily and in huge numbers.

  These past two months had not been at all like that for Werner Reinert. Today’s kill brought his score up to seven. Well, his and Lent’s. But, in fact, he had shot down four of those entirely himself with his cannon. The other three, he had damaged at least as much as his gunner had in destroying them. Any day now Reichsmarschall Göring, or maybe even the Führer himself, would be pinning an Iron Cross on his chest. That would impress Lotte.<
br />
  It would make Rudel as proud, too, as though he had won the decoration himself. Rudel, his batman, already had an Iron Cross for service as an artilleryman in the Kaiser’s war, in which he had reached the rank of sergeant. He seemed perfectly happy as a private now. It was more interesting, he said, than running a tobacconist’s shop: his wife was doing that perfectly well in his absence; which showed, he said, that it wasn’t really a man’s job.

  Lotte, now. Just thinking about her made him tumescent and he hastily draped a towel about his loins. He put on his dressing-gown, called to Ebeling above the din, “Sorry you can’t join us this evening. See you tomorrow. Enjoy yourself.”

  Yes, Lotte. There was a dish. He’d been having a good time with the girls since he was 15: God bless the Führer’s strength-through-joy policy for that. Mixed skiing holidays, with boys and girls piled into the same chalets. Mixed camping, boys and girls in adjacent tents. Mixed swimming in the nude. All done to stimulate and satisfy the sexual appetite, in the name of procreating the Master Race to the greater glory of the Third Reich that was destined, the Führer promised, to endure for 1,000 years.

  His Lotte was honey-blonde, green-eyed and dainty. Her father was a full colonel in the Luftwaffe, serving just now on the Staff in Berlin. It was lucky the Herr Oberst had left his wife and three daughters in their home here in western Germany, or he would never have met her. Lotte said with a giggle that of course Daddy had a mistress in Berlin and didn’t miss his home comforts all that much. With another giggle she added that of course Mummy had nothing to complain about, the way she was carrying on with that attractive young Major in the Armoured Corps.

  Lotte’s family had money. Both father and mother had inherited substantial fortunes. It wasn’t easy for a lawyer’s son in the rank of mere Leutnant to keep up with their style. In fact it was impossible. But at least he had his Volkswagen in which to run her around and from time to time her mother would smile at him and say, “My treat tonight, kids. I’ve booked you a table: all you have to do is sign the bill and they’ll put it on my account.” He had not found a way of politely refusing such generosity. Lotte had said, “Don’t worry about money, darling: Mummy fancies you. I’m the one who has to worry. Her Panzer Major will be posted one of these days and she’ll cast around for a replacement.”