Bombs Gone Read online

  The paucity of R.A.F. bombers available meant that each squadron could have only a short rest between operations. The mitigating feature was that few of these were bombing raids, flown by day. To the annoyance and disappointment of the crews, the majority of their flying effort was exerted on dropping leaflets: bumph raids, as the men who had to carry them out called them with scorn. A further relief from daylight sorties over Germany was allowed by the fact that leaflet-dropping was done at night and therefore much safer than venturing over German ports in daylight.

  To add to the crews’ irritation over what they regarded as the time-wasting job of bombarding Germany with paper instead of high explosive, all bombing attacks for the first few months of the war were on ships. This policy was adopted by the Government to avoid any risk of accidentally dropping bombs on non-military buildings and installations, or the civilian population. The Government did go so far as to allow Bomber Command to attack ships in port, not only those at sea, but with the stricture that no bombs must be allowed to drift off-target. This meant that if warships were alongside a quay they had to be attacked from a suicidally low level; and if this were not possible because of tall obstacles they had to be left alone.

  Some fighter squadrons in the east of England and in Scotland had shot down a few enemy aircraft, but most of their work consisted of patrolling convoys. Whatever aggression was being offered to the enemy was therefore left mostly to the bombers: and they were frustrated by having to fly several bumph raids for every “real” one.

  In a way, being allowed to drop bombs on naval targets was regarded by the squadrons as a treat. It may have been a great deal more perilous than unloading bundles of paper in the dark and from an altitude at which only the heavy flak could hit them (night fighters at that period were almost impotent), but bombing was the task for which they had been trained and hitting the enemy was what they had joined the service to do. It was concomitant with the honour of the Royal Air Force: which leaflet-dropping, they believed, was not.

  Leaflet raids were a bore and made them feel shame-faced, but in a way they were a treat too because they imposed less strain.

  Reconnaissance fell about mid-way between. It had to be done by daylight, which invited interception by enemy fighters as well as enabling the flak gunners to aim more accurately than at night. But as a rule it was not necessary to fly at low level where light flak and heavy-calibre machine-guns were a threat. And sometimes they could stay really high and take photographs, with enough time to get away from the enemy fighters before these could climb to their level.

  The first-light readiness for all bomber squadrons had by now ceased. On the morning after Ridley’s first meeting with Shirley Ward he was allowed to sleep until 8 a.m. When he woke to the cup of tea which Overton held out to him, his head ached in only the mildest way and his slight hangover soon passed, with the resilience of youth and the cathartic effect of his immediate thought: in a few hours he was going to play host to the prettiest, most charming, most entrancing-voiced girl he had ever known.

  That pleasant tenor did not hold for long.

  At 8.30 Ridley sat down next to Clive, with a copy of the Daily Express which had been abandoned by an earlier breakfaster, and began silently on his porridge, bacon and egg.

  At nine o’clock a lorry deposited them and several other pilots and observers at the squadron crew rooms. Vic Pyne, Stan Redfern and Ray Noakes had just arrived and came over to ask whether there was any gen on the day’s programme.

  In recent weeks, air-gunners and wireless-operators had not only become completely embodied as flying crew and exempt from their ground trades, but had also been formed into permanent crews. The promotion of all non-commissioned aircrew to sergeant was still many weeks off (it began in January 1940) and both rank and pay were still an insult to brave and patriotic men; but at least efficiency was increased by allowing crews to stay together as a continuing team.

  “We know as much as you do,” Ridley said. “Or as little. Weather doesn’t look too bad. We’ll go and see what our ingenious flight commander has got to say. Come on, Ronnie, let’s beard Eric in his den.”

  Pilot and observer crossed the tarmac to their squadron hangar and adjoining offices. Ridley knocked on a door on which was painted “ F/L E.K.T. Skelton. O.C. A Flight.” They could hear several voices and some laughter, and Eric Skelton’s raised to shout, “Come in.”

  Junior officers did not address anyone below the rank of squadron-leader as “sir”, but it was the custom to accord this respect to flight-commanders at the first on-duty encounter of the day. Ridley and Clive saluted. One always saluted when entering any officer’s office, however lowly his rank. Both said, “Good-morning, sir.”

  “Hello, Derek ... hello, Clive ... sit down if you can find anywhere.”

  The few chairs were all occupied and people were perching on any convenient horizontal surface.

  Someone said, “Nobody’s going to sit on my lap,” which raised a cackle and some vulgar innuendo. The two newcomers leaned against a wall.

  “You’ve come to ask if there’s any gen, I suppose.” Skelton fondled his moustache, which he had been doing with increasing frequency since the squadron had started daylight shipping-strikes. Ridley was already wondering how much was due to nerves and how much to pride in the flight-commander’s really quite prolific adornment. It would not be long before he recognised similar signs of tension in many of his comrades.

  Skelton was 28 years old and one of the only two permanent-commission, R.A.F. College Cranwell-trained officers on the squadron. The other was the squadron-commander. Ridley had been in great awe of him when he first joined the squadron: an awe enhanced by Skelton’s fierce moustache which made him look both a martinet and rather older than his years. He had soon found, however, that, although the flight commander had a keen eye for any lapse from the Cranwell standard of perfection in all regards, he was essentially as informal and cheerily offhand as the tradition of the R.A.F., handed on by the R.F.C., expected. To outsiders, there was much less discipline, especially in personal relationships, in the Air Force than in the Army or Navy. The truth of it was that the junior service imposed its own discipline, which was not immediately obvious to those excluded from its mystique. It held the belief that incessant heel-stamping, frantic saluting, a morbid obsession with parades and button-polishing, and general fear and obsequiousness were not essential for the achievement of obedience and a high professional performance in battle. Being intrinsically a technical service and one which practised a profession which was by nature dangerous even in peacetime, the R.A.F. was utterly different from, and not understood by, soldiers and sailors. And that was how it preferred matters to be.

  In answer to his flight-commander’s challenge, Ridley said with an air of innocence, “I heard a rumour that we were being released for the day. Thought I’d look in and ask if there’s any truth in it.”

  Several voices promptly announced that, if there were any chance of a stand-down, it certainly would not apply to Ridley’s crew, whose pilot obviously needed all the extra flying time he could be given. One of these wanted to know why he, his observer and two members of the disreputable B Flight had been seen poodle-faking in the company of a group-captain who was widely known to belong to that inferior category of person known as fighter pilot.

  “We were just pointing out to him that if his Spitfire and Hurricane types at Overstrand are scared of crossing the North Sea at any time, we’ll be glad to escort them,” Ridley said.

  This outrageous statement went down well and earned him absolution.

  Eventually Skelton said, “I’ve had a word with Met and they say the weather’s pretty foul on the Jerry coast, so they don’t think we’re likely to get any work today.”

  “That’s never stopped us going before,” somebody observed.

  Somebody else added, “The weather is usually the opposite to the Met forecast, anyway.”

  And then, at ten minutes past nine,
the flight-commander’s telephone rang. As he listened the unconcerned expression on his face changed, his hand went up to pluck at his moustache and when he put the instrument down and reached for his cap he said in a voice in which the chaffing note had changed to one of seriousness, “C.O. wants me. You’d better piss off to the crew room.” Ten minutes later he appeared at the crew-room door himself and the chatter instantly died.

  In an attentive silence he said, “Ops on. Captains and observers of the following crews report to Operations straight away.”

  Among the four captains’ names he read out from the sheet of paper in his hand, in addition to his own, was “P.O. Ridley: ‘N’ for nuts.”

  *

  It was said about the Wellington that you could never take its measurements accurately, because it was never the same twice. The geodetic fuselage was flexible. In heavy weather its movements were so pronounced that the flexing caused the elevator cables to move. This meant that the control column strayed back and forth on its own, in the pilot’s hands, and the aircraft pitched up and down involuntarily. This was tiring for the pilot, who could not switch on the automatic equipment and let it do the flying. It was also uncomfortable for everyone, most of all the rear gunner, and made the observer’s task difficult: instruments skittered all over his desk and fell to the floor to roll away and lose themselves.

  Navigation was fraught with uncertainties even in the best conditions. Instruments were crude, compasses were subject to error, weather-forecasts seldom provided accurate winds, temperatures or pressures. There was no airborne radar and the wireless direction-finding system was imprecise. Navigation depended entirely on dead reckoning, which in the end came down to the ability of each individual navigator: provided all the aircraft instruments worked reasonably well and the weather conditions were neither too adverse nor too different from the prediction.

  The squadrons flew in conditions which, in peacetime, would have kept them on the ground. But on this morning the clouds were at 5,000ft, there were breaks in them and a little wintry sun was shining from time to time.

  The group-captain was already in the Ops Room, with his two squadron-commanders. He began the briefing as soon as the last man had joined the circle around the table.

  “Group are sending out five aircraft from each squadron. This is a reconnaissance, but if you see anything you are to attack immediately. Blenheims which made an earlier sortie reported probable enemy movements between Nordeney and Cuxhaven.”

  Both the island and the mainland port were already familiar to them and there were one or two grimaces: the area was well covered by enemy fighters and on a clear day like this they were bound to meet them in strength.

  The C.O. of Ridley’s squadron was leading the formation and gave his orders tersely.

  “We’ll go straight across, just below cloud base. Two vics of five. If enemy fighters interfere we’ll maintain height. They won’t be able to attack us from above. If necessary, we’ll take cover in cloud. If that happens, loosen the formation and hold a steady course. After two minutes, go below cloud again to check our station-keeping and whether there are still fighters about. Repeat the drill every two minutes. But remember, our main job is to find out if there are any enemy ships around, not to dodge enemy fighters.”

  Bombers did not yet have communication with each other by radio-telephone. All transmissions were in Morse and communication was kept only with their base and with Group H.Q. Signals had to be given by Verey pistol, by waggling an aircraft’s wings or, when feasible, by manual signs. Conditions were much closer to what they had been in 1918 than to what they would be by 1943. Even bomb-sights in use were virtually the same as those used at the end of the Great War.

  The wops and air-gunners were speculating noisily about the probable nature of the operation, the target and weather. The crew room was smoke-laden. Everyone became quiet as the C.O. came in with the other captains and their observers close on his heels. There was not enough space in the Ops Room for entire crews to attend every briefing.

  While they took their flying gear from their lockers, Ridley summarised for his three troops what he had been told. “We’re using instantaneous fuses this trip,” he finished. “The bombs will explode on impact instead of bouncing off.”

  “In theory,” Clive said. The others laughed. Already at this early stage of the war they had all learned to take nothing on trust.

  N was regarded as a fairly vice-free aircraft. Ridley had not flown it before, but nobody had complained of chronic defects such as baffling faults in the electrical system, a disposition to magneto drops or a tendency to drop one wing. It had been delivered four or five weeks previously and had suffered only slight damage to the fabric from flak, which had been satisfactorily patched. Doing his exterior checks, he hoped that it would not play any awkward tricks on him today. He had not yet had to abandon a sortie and knew that each time he took off the odds shortened against his having to return prematurely on account of unserviceability.

  It was only after he had taken off and was in position on the extreme left of the leading V that he remembered his promised telephone call to Shirley at lunch-time. Damn! It was 1030 now: bombing-up the Wellingtons had held them up. It would be at least 1430 before they returned. Well, she would probably guess what had happened. He supposed that even on fighter stations pilots were sometimes ordered off without notice!

  This thought was followed by the galling one that he could have very little chance of capturing her exclusive interest. She was surrounded by fighter boys, damn it, and was no doubt the toast of the officers’ mess, the belle of every ball and spoiled rotten by types queuing up to take her out every evening. On top of that, she was shortly about to disappear into the W.A.A.F.: where she would be exposed to even more attention from an even greater number of fighter types. Top-button-undone glamour boys. They were already getting the bulk of the publicity.

  Those thoughts would have to wait for later. They were flying through a patch of turbulence and the Wimpey was bucking like a bronco.

  At the navigation desk on the other side of the bulkhead behind the pilot, Clive had his own set of problems with which to cope. Although the squadron commander’s observer was carrying the main responsibility for navigation, and the rest of the aircraft were simply following their leader, that did not mean that the other observers could sit back and do nothing. For one thing, they all took every opportunity to practise. For another, they had to be prepared for a separation from, or general break-up of, the formation, which would leave them to find their way home alone. To do that, they had to keep a careful record of progress and position. Finally there was the interest they all took in one another’s skill and the glee with which they would detect errors made by the C.O.’s observer.

  The speed at which they were travelling was the basis of accurate navigating, and even an apparently simple matter like speed was, in the air, very complicated. Indicated air speed, shown on the instrument panel, was only the beginning of it. That had to be rectified to take into account errors of position and in the instruments. Altitude and temperature had then to be applied, to arrive at true air speed. From that, the windspeed had to be added or subtracted to produce the speed over the ground.

  Altitude was not a straightforward matter of reading from the altimeter. The pressure varied along the route and corrections were necessary to take this into account. Wind speed and direction had to be calculated by dropping smoke flares and by timing.

  The observer had also to watch the fuel gauges and, as no two pilots flew in exactly the same way, consumption could vary widely.

  Every variation, every check, had to be entered in the log. The observer also had to keep plotting a graph which showed distance travelled and fuel remaining, on which the actual figures were shown against the planned ones. From this he could inform his pilot at any stage about safety margin and warn him when they had reached the point of no return.

  The wireless-operator seemed to do little othe
r than listen, for no signals were sent from aircraft except to report sightings, attacks or emergencies, as a precaution against alerting the enemy. But listening for transmissions from base or Group was not a quiescent and tranquil duty. The air crackled with atmospherics that left the ears ringing for long after a flight was over. There was the anxiety of ensuring that the receiver had not drifted off tune or developed some serious fault. Above all was the tension of waiting for vital changes of orders, fresh information, or, worst of all, a recall signal which would abort the sortie.

  The air-gunners had to be as patient as cows chewing the cud and as vigilant as hawks seeking the slightest movement that would alert them to the presence of their prey. Except that it was they who were the prey, keeping their eyes peeled for a sign of hostile aircraft; and for the ships they were seeking.

  There was no frivolous chatter on the intercommunication. As the war progressed and the service became flooded by hostilities-only officers and troops, crews loosened up and it was not uncommon for them to maintain an almost constant flow of badinage and song. But in November 1939, when bomber crews were composed almost entirely of pre-war regulars, with some Volunteer Reservists, the regular R.A.F.’s discipline still applied and no one spoke unnecessarily. Besides, aircraftmen and junior N.C.O.s did not speak until their officers spoke to them, however easy-going an atmosphere the officers tried to create. Ridley was no martinet, but he strictly clamped down on idle natter. His air-gunners sucked boiled sweets, chewed gum and blinked their aching eyes from time to time to make sure their vision was still clear. It could play weird tricks. Anyone could think he saw a vessel where only a cloud shadow lay on the sea, or a Messerschmitt where a large bird or a wisp of vapour moved against the sky.

  And wherever you sat in the aircraft, whatever your preoccupations were, your ears were assailed hour after hour by the drumming of the engines, so that you were partly deafened when you returned to the ground and stayed that way for some time afterwards.