Operation Thunderflash Read online

  He could go back in memory to his earliest days as a 15-year-old apprentice on boys’ service in 1922, and recall the names and faces of all his officers and senior NCOs and his course contemporaries. There were no gaps in his clear recollections covering his postings from station to station, to five years in India and then on to the great triumph of selection for pilot training.

  Moakes loved flying and he loved aircraft. He was happy with his life, and the outbreak of war meant mostly, to him, that here was a chance to put all those 17 years of varied training into practice. He had been a pilot for seven years by then, long since promoted to flight sergeant and made very proud of the brightly polished brass crown he now wore over his immaculately white sergeants’ chevrons; or tapes, as the RAF called them.

  At that time he was flying Heyfords, destined to be the last of the biplane heavy bombers, a wonderfully stable type but capable only of a top speed of 142 mph. Heyford pilots were beginning to feel a bit out of the main stream, for the monoplane Harrow heavy bomber was in service by then, with a maximum speed of 200 mph and a sleek modern aspect. In 1939 the Heyfords were being replaced by Wellingtons and Moakes had looked forward keenly to the day when his squadron would be equipped with these splendidly up-to-date aeroplanes. But, instead, he was posted to a new squadron being formed with Whitleys.

  And that was where he had met Tim Leatham — Flying Officer Leatham as he then was — for the first time.

  He had a momentary vision, against the night sky over the Ruhr, of young Leatham that first day.

  The war was a few weeks old. Leatham, handsome, smart and smiling, had made him feel a bit of a clod-hopper. Made him feel ham-fisted, too, for Leatham had come from handling Blenheims, which were used as fighters as well as bombers and could reach 260 mph.

  They had been crewed up together, with four other sergeants, and he had the intuition that his captain resented him more than he resented being second pilot. There was no reason for it, Moakes felt. Leatham had three hundred more flying hours than he did, because Leatham was rich and owned a small private aircraft. But Moakes had more Service flying time and night flying time than his captain. However, an officer was an officer, even an auxiliary one; and a flight sergeant was only an NCO, even one who had, as they said, been in since Pontius was a pilot.

  Moakes had an uncomfortable memory tucked away at the back of his mind which he dragged out that night on his way back to base. It was the memory of the first op. Fg. Off. Leatham’s crew had flown: over Kiel. It was, of course, their first taste of flak. Leatham had, without warning, begun to vomit and Moakes had had to take over: from the time they crossed the coast, to the target, and until they had crossed out over the coast again.

  The fish he had eaten for dinner must have been rancid, Moakes had said; and the bumpy air had done the rest.

  People who puked in aeroplanes had to clean up their own mess. Moakes could remember a flight mechanic, a useful boxer called LAC Ron Emery, walking up the Whitley’s fuselage and exclaiming, “Phew! What a pong. Who threw up, then? Bumpy, was it?”

  To save his captain’s face, Moakes had given a hand to mop up: but by the way Emery and others had looked at him it was plain they knew he was covering up; and for whom. No one would believe that a stolid old stager, a Services heavyweight champion, would ever be air sick.

  Several raids had followed in quick succession and gongs had been dished out: to encourage everyone, the recipients had deprecatingly declared. A Distinguished Flying Cross for Leatham and a Distinguished Flying Medal for :Makes among them.

  Four months later there had been a sticky op. right up to Norway when the enemy invaded there.

  The details were clear among Moakes’s most distasteful memories.

  He had recently been commissioned, and in view of his long service and seniority as an NCO he had gone straight to flying officer, missing out pilot officer altogether. Being commissioned put him on first name terms with his captain; who had never suggested that he drop the “sir” as long as he was a flight sergeant. It relaxed any inhibitions he felt about telling Leatham what he thought of him, too.

  There had been a warm welcome for them as they flew up a fjord that night where they had not expected to be shot at by the German Navy. There had been a hotter reception awaiting them over land. The weather had grown cloudy and the moon was hidden. They had to fly below cloud, where Jerry’s predictors and searchlights and the flak gunners’ sharp eyes could detect them.

  Leatham had been on edge.

  “Come on, Observer, where the hell’s the target?”

  “Twenty miles, sir.”

  “Rot...I had a good look at the photographs...this is the place...”

  “Eighteen-and-a-bit miles now, sir, five degrees to starboard.”

  A turn further starboard would take them deeper over land.

  “I don’t believe it...you’ve got your sums wrong. What’s that I can see almost dead ahead?”

  “Where?” Moakes had asked, knowing that the observer was busy.

  “About half-past-twelve.” Meaning just to the right, ahead.

  Moakes peered through the windscreen. “Looks like a group of buildings...a sawmill, perhaps...”

  “It’s the target, man!” The flak a few miles ahead was thick in the sky, searchlights swept high and wide. “We’re going to bomb that...now.”

  So they bombed and turned for home and Moakes felt that this time he could genuinely have been sick.

  A week later he was made an aircraft captain and parted from Leatham. But not before he told him he had made a wrong decision in a fit of panic and probably killed several innocent Norwegians; but that was not the way Leatham had reported it on their return, and Moakes and the observer had played things down out of decency; and contempt.

  Leatham had been made up to flight lieutenant at that point. In those days bomber squadrons were still under the command of a squadron leader and the flights were commanded by flight lieutenants. There were more than two flight lieutenants on the squadron and Leatham was appointed to be a deputy Flight Commander. Soon after, the Flight Commander was killed and Leatham took over from him.

  Moakes dwelt on those days in his thoughts with a bad taste in his mouth. He wished Emery hadn’t shown up like that, without warning: he had banished that time from his consciousness long ago and now he was reminded of it all over again. Emery had been one of his particular ground crew and evinced no respect for Flt. Lt. Leatham, their Flight Commander; and, being an old sweat himself by t hen, one of the increasingly rare nucleus of regulars in an expanded wartime Royal Air Force, and having grown familiar with Flight Sergeant Moakes (within respectful reason), he did not hesitate to hint at his dislike of their superior officer.

  In the autumn of 1940 bomber operations intensified, and with all western Europe except Sweden and Switzerland occupied by the enemy, the flak defences spread as rapidly and lethally as cancer. Flying bomber ops. had become a very hazardous occupation.

  It still was, and Moakes let his thoughts dwell on an old grievance that had been reawakened when he found himself once more on the same squadron as Leatham; and aroused again that morning when he came face-to-face with Emery after three years.

  The target one night in October 1940 was Berlin, a long haul. The squadron’s specific objective was a gasworks, while other units were attacking a railway yard and a power station. The weather was bad and the flak alert all the way. Leatham was on the raid; probably, Moakes had thought at the time, because the cloud conditions gave some protection from enemy fighters and searchlights.

  To bomb, the Whitleys had been forced to break cloud at 6,000 ft. and invite the close attention of both searchlights and flak. From this comparatively low altitude the inferno that earlier bombs had started looked particularly lurid and the anti-aircraft barrage seemed close enough to touch.

  Moakes had bombed with reasonable accuracy despite damage to his aircraft. One of the aircraft ahead of him had caused a huge explosion in the ga
sworks, and he also hit a gasometer with spectacular results.

  While climbing away to shelter above cloud once more, the Whitley was hit in the starboard engine; and hit again and again.

  The second pilot was killed, the rear gunner and observer were both wounded, one mortally.

  They struggled back as far as France before the other engine began to overheat, to give signs of fuel starvation, and finally died. By then the observer was dead too but the tail gunner was able to scramble out of his turret. There was no alternative to baling out and Moakes gave the order. He told the three other survivors to follow each other in quick succession so as to land as close together as possible.

  In theory it was simple enough for a captain to switch on the automatic pilot and bale out himself. In practice, the crippled aircraft did not maintain a comfortable even keel while he did so. It rocked and pitched and banked and there was not much room to move around in anyway, while “g” forces interfered with his movements.

  By the time Moakes had emerged he was a long way from where he dropped his crew.

  Luck was with him. He was picked up almost at once by the French underground organisation, hidden, and, a few nights later, picked up by a Lysander and flown home. During the short time that he was in France he had learned that one of his men had been shot by the Germans and the other two captured and sent to Germany.

  Everyone had been sympathetic and kind when he got back; except his Flight Commander.

  After the Intelligence interrogations, the latter had summoned Moakes to his office.

  Leatham assumed his customary urbane manner, but spoke with cold formality.

  “You are positively sure that you hit your target, sire you, Moakes?”

  This was the last thing Moakes had expected; and especially from such a source. He gave a half-amused laugh as he replied, “No doubt about it at all.”

  “Pity your aircraft pranged and there are no photographs to prove it.”

  Angry now, Moakes said, “It’s an even greater pity that none of my crew are here to prove it, either.”

  “They could hardly prove it,” Leatham said smoothly.

  Moakes felt the urge to hit him. Instead he told him quietly, “No one on my crew is...or was...a liar...or a funk.”

  Leatham paled but still appeared unruffled and cold. “I bombed just before you, you may remember, and I distinctly saw your aircraft — I saw the letter ‘K’ quite clearly — in the light of the searchlights and the fires.” He paused and gave Moakes a malicious look. “I thought at the time that you were on the wrong target: I don’t believe you hit the gasworks.”

  Moakes stood up. “If I know you, you barely could have come below cloud: I’ll bet you bombed while you were still on the fringes of it, and bolted up again as fast as you could. The most unconvincing part of your story is that you came low enough to see what was going on or hung around afterwards to watch.”

  “That is exactly the sort of sneer I would expect from you. However, that’s not all I’ve got to say to you. I find it more than a little odd that you were the only one of your crew to survive.”

  At that, Moakes had risen to his feet and for a moment had the satisfaction of seeing Leatham look frightened. “If I stay here and listen to you, Leatham, I’ll wind up by beating the living daylights out of you; and I don’t want to throw away eighteen years’ unblemished service on someone like you and ruin my career: so I’ll go.”

  But that was not the end of it.

  Thenceforward Moakes had noticed a stiffness in the attitude of his Squadron Commander, the Station Commander and various others towards him. He was even summoned to Group Headquarters for a detailed review of his report on the attack and the subsequent events.

  No criticism was ever voiced, but he was posted soon after to another Whitley squadron: on the excuse that as he had been flying recently with a scratch crew it would best serve Bomber Command for him to go to a new squadron which had suffered badly from casualties and needed experienced captains to head replacement crews.

  It had taken him a long time to win his next promotion, to flight lieutenant; but he had flown so many operations with his new squadron that he had far exceeded the normal tour and was rewarded with a DFC when he at last was forced to rest and go to an OTU as instructor.

  Moakes had chafed against the routine of a training unit and, furthermore, began to worry about his age. He thought that if he did not get back to ops. very soon he would be passed over permanently for operational flying. It was still too early in the war to predict that the time would come when experienced men much older than he would be welcome on operational air crews.

  By the time Moakes was posted back to an operational squadron, flying Lancasters this time, Leatham was a squadron leader at the headquarters of the Group to which his squadron belonged. Leatham had been posted off ops. not long after Moakes left the Whitley squadron, and had begun the first of a series of staff appointments that would keep him away from ops. for two years.

  The first time they met again was when Sqdn. Ldr. Leatham arrived on a staff visit to Flt. Lt. Moakes’s station in the role of staff officer responsible for aircraft safety and the investigation of flying accidents.

  The flak was far behind now, with only one more gauntlet to run when they crossed the French coast, before they were home. Moakes sat relaxed at the controls, letting “George” the auto-pilot do the flying, and thought back to that day a year and a half ago.

  He himself had aged beyond his years, his looking glass told him: face furrowed, hair greying slightly, deep wrinkles at the corners of his eyes: all, the legacy of so many hours of flying over enemy territory. Leatham, in contrast, who had enjoyed well over a year’s rest by then, almost looked younger than when he had last seen him.

  Leatham had greeted him like a long-lost friend with whom he was overjoyed to be reunited.

  “Hello, Donk, good to see you,” and the firm, sincere handclasp of the practised deceiver. “Well, at least you’re one pilot I know we don’t have to worry about: you’re the last chap to figure in an accident report.”

  Moakes, who was prone to the traditional long-service man’s superstitions, winced inwardly. He felt as a sailor would have felt if a crew mate had slain an albatross, or a soldier if someone had used a match to light three cigarettes. Saying things like that was courting a mishap.

  Within three months, Moakes, who was a squadron leader and Flight Commander by then, happily settled on his squadron, with Leatham forgotten again, careered off the runway and rammed a brick building.

  He had been taking off on a routine air test prior to that night’s operation. The court of enquiry exonerated him from blame: there had been three simultaneous failures in the aircraft, of which he could have had no control or forewarning. An oleo leg had collapsed, the fuel system had been clogged, and two control cables had snapped. Metal fatigue and hidden damage from flak and fighters had been the cause.

  There were two airmen in the building, who had been mashed to pulp. It was no consolation to Moakes that it was not his fault.

  Leatham had pursued the matter with a zeal which Moakes, but no one else, knew was vindictive. He had striven to find evidence that the pilot was at least partly to blame. He had referred to the incident at great length in the monthly accident report which was circulated throughout Bomber Command; and alluded to it in the two subsequent ones. Rumours about Moakes’s judgment had begun to go the rounds, all based on nothing but insinuation.

  The most unpleasant shock of Moakes’s career had been when Leatham was promoted and posted to command his squadron.

  One statement from Leatham while he was at headquarters would have dispelled the rumours and cleared all shadow from Moakes’s good name. The statement was never made.

  Five - Bill Bracken

  Ten days after we joined the squadron we were down for ops. for the first time.

  When I saw the blackboard in the crew room, with names and aircraft identification letters scrawled
in white chalk, I felt a quick nervous contraction in my guts and a pick-up in my pulse rate.

  There it was, casually chalked among a dozen of them: U P/O Bracken. That was all, but it meant for us the culmination of a lot of hard work and many months during which we had seen colleagues failed and killed.

  Dan Feldman expressed what we all felt when we saw it. “Good,” he said quietly.

  I haven’t said much about Dan until now, but in many ways he was the best of us all. Despite his flashy red sports car with its gleaming chromium and array of huge lamps and badges, he was unobtrusive. Perhaps having generations of persecution and migration behind you teaches you not to push yourself on other people’s attention. Dan had thick black wavy hair, well pomaded, and used an after-shave lotion, which was rare in those days, and was always surrounded by a pleasant spicy aura. Coming from a family of tailors, his erks’ uniform was no ordinary one. Even the rough serge material worn by ORs had been cut and put together to look better than most officers’ uniforms.

  Dan did his job as immaculately as he dressed and groomed himself. He kept his log in the neatest hand you could wish for, was complete master of all the wireless equipment over which he presided, however bad the conditions, and unfailingly polite and obliging. I had never heard him swear or seen him even slightly tight. He always had a startlingly pretty girl friend, which I attributed to his agreeable ways and romantic black-eyed, black-haired looks; his sports car; and his money: in that order. Whereas Eddie Hill had a whole procession of girls, whom he chucked as soon as he had bedded them - or the equivalent in a haystack or air raid shelter - Dan was constant.

  At OTU he had taken the most beautiful Waaf on camp in tow for the whole time we were there. He had, so the other sergeants told me, a photograph in his bunk of a lovely girl back home in Leeds whom he was courting. He took his time, but always came up with a winner. On that day of our first op. when we were still new arrivals he was girl-less on the station, but we all knew he was prospecting and before long would be seen constantly in the company of some stunner.