Operation Thunderflash Read online

  Another hour to kill. First, I wanted to tell Ron, Dan,

  Keith and Eddie about the target for the night. They were

  waiting for us to emerge from briefing, grouped by the door. “Piece of cake,” I said; with quiet confidence, I hoped.

  “Berlin?” grinned Eddie.

  “We’re hardly going to poke our noses over the German frontier,” I told them. “Cologne.”

  “Bloody ‘ell, Skip,” Eddie said, “that’s a bastard.”

  “No, it’s not,” Nick contradicted him. “You’ve been listening to rumours: we have been listening to a briefing.”

  “What’s the route, Bill?” asked Ron.

  I explained it, and Ron and Dan nodded appreciatively while Eddie still bubbled with the mounting pressure of repressed comment and Keith watched him silently. He greatly admired Eddie’s quickness, which was such a contrast with his own ponderous ways.

  Dan said, “I’ve been having a chat with the squadron Signals officer; just checking frequencies and procedures. He was very helpful. It all seems pretty straightforward.”

  I said, “I hope we don’t get a recall signal half-way there, for some change in the weather over the target. Apparently it happens quite often in the winter, but we should be all right at this time of year. It’ll be frustrating if we have to abandon our first op.”

  “If they send out a recall, just ignore it, Dan; we’ll go ahead and clobber Jerry on our own.” That, of course, was Eddie.

  Keith sucked his disgusting old pipe and grinned, muttered something in broad Geordie dialect, which could only have been approval, and squared his shoulders pugnaciously. I sometimes felt that Eddie was a bad influence on him.

  We talked about the briefing for a few minutes, then Nick said, “I’m going to lay off my courses and swot up my notes. It’s all right for you chaps, you can go and flop into an armchair, but I’m the chap who’s got to get us all there and back.”

  “I’ll give you a hand with your charts, if you like,” Bruce offered.

  “Come along,” Nick said, “let’s go and do some work.”

  I knew they must be feeling as restless as I was. I wondered how best to pass the time before we could decently go and eat our operational meal; and decided that a stroll in the fresh air and sunshine was the best preparation for being cooped up and breathing oxygen for several hours. I also felt I wanted to be alone for a while. So I suggested to the other four, “You types should go and take it easy for an hour: I’m just going to have a look at Uncle and make sure nothing’s cropped up during the day.” A few words with the ground crew, I felt, would not be out of place: our lives depended on their good work and I didn’t want them to think I didn’t appreciate that.

  The surroundings of Belton were not conducive to gentle contemplation, or I would have gone for a walk to the far side of the camp. The country was flat and bleak and not at all like the intimate, rolling wooded landscape I loved best about England. So I took myself off to dispersals, found the ground crew a trifle surprised to see me, watched the bombs being loaded, and then walked slowly to the operations canteen.

  Providing meals at odd times for large numbers of men was a burden of which the officers’ and sergeants’ messes were relieved. All air crew ate an ops. meal together in the ops. canteen and this also had another practical use; it brought us all together on an equal footing and prepared us for the teamwork and comradeship on which we would depend for several hours to come. From the time we entered the canteen the op. had virtually started.

  The standard meal was bacon and eggs: two eggs and plenty of bacon. Dan and anyone else who eschewed pig meat was allowed a double portion of eggs.

  I was ready for the off and yet no one seemed in a hurry. People were talking about all sorts of mundane topics: the last ENSA show, the next film at the station cinema, what was on in the local towns, where you could get a good meal if you took a popsie out for the evening, what a bind it was that we had to do compulsory PT as though we were still at initial training wing, when everyone knew that the best way of keeping fit for ops. was to drink plenty of beer and then sleep it off.

  In stories about the Great War, in books, films and plays, characters were in the habit of writing letters to their nearest and dearest before going into action for the first time. I had briefly wondered whether I ought to leave a letter behind for my mother, but decided that this would be morbid and even a harbinger of bad luck. My parents did not need a special letter declaring my affection, if I failed to return from this, or any other op. My father, who was in the Territorial Army, had been wounded in the retreat to Dunkirk in 1940 and was now a staff major in Combined Operations. I was perfectly sure he had never left any last messages for my mother. And she was a brisk and practical lady who, despite her great kindness and warmth, wouldn’t have put much store by such sentimentality. She worked herself to exhaustion nowadays, in our small Hampshire town, for the Red Cross and Women’s Institute. My two young brothers, away at boarding school, would have thought it very odd of me indeed if I had left any notes for them in anticipation of my possible demise; both were obsessed with the idea of being able to join up themselves: the Commandos and Parachute Regiment tied for first place in their aspirations; with Spitfires second. I suspected that they looked on me as almost a non-combatant, in my Lanc.

  Along with 167 other similar non-combatants I went from the ops. canteen to the great barn of a place where grim rows of grey steel lockers held our flying clothes and parachutes.

  At this time of year it was tempting to think we need not swaddle ourselves up: but at 20,000 ft. we wanted complete Irvine or Sidcot suits. Flying boots and an Irvine jacket were not enough. Many people wore the stores-issue roll-necked white sweaters, known quaintly in the stores vocabulary as “frocks, white”, because they were more comfortable than a collar and tie.

  We put on our “Mae West” life vests, and, with a flying helmet in one hand and parachute pack in the other, went outside to await pick-up by the three-tonners that would drop us off at dispersals.

  A lot of people smoked while they waited, Eddie, Dan and Ron among them, puffing nervously on cigarettes, Keith at his pipe.

  Sundry airmen technicians who were hanging around, some of them also going out to dispersals, kept their distance and I was aware for the first time of belonging, in their eyes, to some kind of an elite. Usually, the ground crews were so possessive about, and proud of, “their” aircraft, the ones they serviced, that we air crews felt as though we were being loaned them grudgingly. This was good, because it played down the fact that we went to war while they stayed safely behind. But I found that on the threshold of an op. tacit respect was manifest; many of the erks avoided looking at us.

  Bruce, even, was showing mild signs of tension. With him it took the form of a kind of nasal bleating which approximated the drone of bagpipes. He was giving a subdued rendering of “The Skye Boat Song” alternating with “Marie’s Wedding”: neither of which I thought pertinent.

  Nick had a brown paper bag under one arm, with which he kept fiddling.

  “What have you got in there?” I asked. “Extra grub?”

  He looked shy. “I’ll show you when we get to the aircraft.”

  “It looks an odd shape.”

  “Actually, it’s a mascot.” He spoke hurriedly, keeping his voice down and looking around to make sure no one was going to overhear and laugh. “My sister sent it to me for a good luck thing for the crew.”

  Nick’s sister was five years older than he was, a great beauty and an established actress in films and on the West End stage. Nick looked on her as the greatest British product of the century.

  When we arrived at dispersals we all crowded round him, and looked self-conscious and dubious about our reception, he unwrapped a puppet of the Big Bad Wolf with a great slavering grin on its face, dressed in a RAF uniform and with a small forage cap perched jauntily on its head. The body was pliable, and the right arm had been bent at the salute; the left
hand held a cardboard sign, “We’re going to gobble Hitler up.”

  The whole crew accorded our mascot a spontaneous cheer, and Wolfie, as we instantly dubbed him, was ceremoniously hung over the navigator’s seat.

  We went through our checks and starting-up procedure in high spirits and took off into the gathering dusk with quite a flourish.

  Ahead and astern we could descry the navigation lights of other Lancs. but soon all 24 aircraft were well strung out, nay. lights were switched off and darkness had fallen.

  I felt isolated and highly charged with responsibility.

  I also wondered whether any German night fighter intruders were making an early start and would intercept us before we reached the North Sea.

  Bruce was in his bomb-aimer’s blister, keeping a lookout for the first navigation check point; I soon heard him call Nick.

  “Bomb-aimer to navigator, coast coming up.”

  “Navigator...thanks.”

  Shortly after, Bruce announced, “Bomb-aimer to navigator, crossing coast...now.”

  “Thank you, Navigator.”

  “Bomb-aimer to captain; all right to come out now?”

  “Captain to bomb-aimer; yes, move aft and give Nick a hand.”

  It was one of the bomb-aimer’s duties to help the navigator with part of our complicated electronic boxes of tricks. The Gee system provided us with a network of radio beams by which we could, with the aid of an intricate Gee chart, fix our position. There was plenty of work for both men.

  Now that we were over the sea we fired a short burst from each of the gun turrets to check that the guns were clear; and the gunners rotated their turrets, which I felt when the barrels entered the slipstream, just as I had felt the juddering of the guns when they were fired, and got a whiff of cordite smoke.

  At 10,000 ft. we went onto oxygen and were at 20,000 ft. when we crossed the Dutch coast.

  From time to time Nick had given me our position, and in my mind’s eye a map of our route was unreeling. I had never seen Holland, but I had a mental picture of a broad beach, dykes, flat green fields and windmills.

  There were also anti-aircraft guns and they gave us a short firework display. Their shells burst too far away to harm us, but I went in for a few diving and climbing turns to put the gunners off their aim and to give my crew some practice at the tactics we would use if fighters caught us.

  So now I had seen my first flak and I was unimpressed. Until, from Eddie in his tail turret, there was a startled, “Bloody ‘ell, Captain...wasn’t it PO Smith behind us? In V for Victor?”

  I knew perfectly well who was speaking, but, even though it made me feel priggish and like a brand new prefect, I at once gave him a rap for not using the right procedure.

  “Captain here. Who’s calling?”

  “Sorry, Skip...rear gunner to captain...the kite behind’s going down with bleedin’ great flames coming out of it.”

  As soon as he had finished Keith chipped in. “Mid-upper to captain...that’s right, Skipper...I can see him.”

  The information was so unpleasant that I vented my shocked feelings on poor Eddie. “Captain to tail gunner: if you’d used the right procedure, you could have told me that first go, in three seconds.”

  Eddie, contritely: “Rear gunner to captain: sorry.”

  “All right: but don’t lose your head and garble the message if you have to report a night fighter.”

  There was silence for a while, until Bruce broke it. “Bomb-aimer to captain: I took a look out of the astro dome; I saw him going down, too.”

  “Captain to crew: anyone see any parachutes?” It may have sounded a daft question to ask at night, but it was just possible that the glare of the burning aircraft had lit up a ‘chute or two.

  My boys replied with full formality.

  “Tail gunner to captain: I didn’t see nothing.”

  “Mid-upper to captain: he went down too quickly, Skipper, even though he was lighting up the whole place.”

  Bruce, who didn’t know any more about it than the rest of us, but presumably wanted to offer some comfort, said “Bomb-aimer to captain: they must have had plenty of time to bale out; they didn’t explode.”

  Great news, I told myself: like being told you were only going to have one leg and one arm amputated.

  “All right, chaps,” I said, “let’s all keep a sharp look out for fighters; we’ll see any more flak soon enough without having to look for it!”

  A prediction that was immediately fulfilled, for we saw distant lights in the sky, globules that glowed redly and then suddenly went out. The aircraft in the van of our stream were catching it. I waited for a bigger, brighter conflagration that would mean a Lancaster had been hit; but the red splodges disappeared and the wavering beams of searchlights leaped up from the ground: night fighters were about.

  “Captain to crew. I can see a lot of searchlights and the flak up ahead has stopped. Stay alert for fighters.”

  But there were a hundred bombers ahead of us and another hundred astern, and two hundred and more to port and starboard, all bound along the same corridor before they divided for various targets: and even if there were fifty night fighters up, there were still enough Lancs. and Halifaxes and Stirlings in the stream to confuse them and distract attention from us.

  Once a searchlight beam did touch us and settle, but I called “Diving turn port” and corkscrewed away out of its path. That made me feel pretty bucked and I resumed level flight again, thanking Nick’s gorgeous sister for our mascot.

  “Captain to navigator: how’s Wolfie doing?”

  “Navigator to captain: he has just performed an involuntary dance.”

  I chuckled into my microphone. “He’d better get used to it. I’m not sitting in any searchlights.”

  “Navigator to captain: your razor-sharp reactions are going to scatter all my pencils, rubbers and nicknacks all over the place.”

  “If I sit around and let us get hit, you won’t need them anyway.”

  We plodded on towards the Dutch-German frontier, and after a while Nick gave me an estimated time of arrival there, and a little later he told me we were crossing it.

  “Captain to crew: feels good to be over bloody Hunland at last, doesn’t it?”

  “Wireless operator to captain: I’d like to empty the Elsan over it; but it would smell like roses, here.” No one had used the chemical bog yet, but I knew what Dan meant.

  “Flight engineer to captain: I’m going to bore my grandchildren with the story of how I flew over Krautland for the first time.” Ron had made friends with some American aircrew on his last leave and learned the word “Kraut”, which he used with relish.

  “I hope you’ll speak of your captain with due reverence. Now, let’s all belt up and keep our eyes skinned. You’d better come for’ard, bomb-aimber.”

  Bruce squeezed between Ron and me, turning his snouted face towards me, his eyes wrinkling in a smile above his oxygen-and-microphone mask. He gave me a thumbs-up before he disappeared into his nose blister.

  When I saw Bruce go to take up his bombing position I had a sharp prod of fear. The whole business seemed so irreversible and inexorable. I knew that whatever happened now I would never turn back: if I didn’t reach the target it would be for only one reason; that the enemy had killed or totally incapacitated me. Flak and fighters could riddle the aircraft, the engines could falter, the wings almost drop off. But as long as I could keep it flying, I would force on; and if I couldn’t get to the target I would somehow drop my bombs anywhere. I had the mad idea that if everyone else was killed I would switch in George and go for’ard and drop the bombs myself.

  We had an 8,000-pounder in our bomb bay, and a load of incendiaries as well. Wherever I dropped them they would let the enemy know I had been there.

  Our real target was quite easy: we had no individual aiming point in the marshalling yards, and if we dropped our load anywhere on the railway complex it would be good enough. A jolly good target, as the group captain
had said, for a novice crew.

  The flak was starting to behave with great determination to prevent us. At three different places I could see aeroplanes burning as they fell to the ground. I saw two explode and light up the sky for so far around them that several other Lancasters were illuminated.

  The searchlights were up, too, weaving all over the sky. I felt highly uncomfortable, but Bruce was in control now: we had begun our bombing run and I was in his hands.

  “Left-left...right a bit...too much...left-left a bit more...”

  And all the time the Lancaster was bucketting around like a dinghy in a gale, swooping, yawing, dropping, as shells burst nearby and air currents caught us.

  This was something they couldn’t simulate at OTU.

  Ahead we could see the coloured markers the Pathfinders had dropped, and the fires that were already raging on and around the various target areas. We identified our own and made as steady a run as I could manage towards it.

  I clenched my teeth and waited...and waited...for the bombs to go. Bruce would say, “Bombs gone” and I would, they had told me, feel the kite jump up the sky as she was relieved of her burden. But neither happened.

  Bruce said, “Bomb-aimer to captain: sorry, but we’ll have to go round again.”

  I wanted to shout at him and tell him he was an incompetent, indecisive clot. I thought of all the other Lancs. overhead that were dropping their loads, and all the tales I’d heard and a few pictures I’d seen of bombers hit by bombs dropped by their comrades. I thought of the sky full of Lancasters churning around at more or less our own altitude, and the collision risk that was even greater than the risk of flying into one of one’s own bombs.

  I didn’t shout at Bruce. I said, calmly, “Turning port. Second run coming up.”

  It was worse than the first time, but Bruce made fewer fussy corrections and at last he said, “Bombs gone!” But I knew before he said so, for the Lanc. did take a mighty leap from its 20,000-foot platform and I forced it level for a few seconds to drop a flare and take a photograph, before diving steeply.