Breakthrough (The Red Gambit Series) (70 page)

The lost figure topped two hundred and skipped to two hundred and nine within a minute.

Harris stood, his shocked entourage rising sluggishly to follow. Indicating that they should remain, the Commander of Bomber Command removed himself
to his office
,
in order to
start the painful process of informing the Allied leadership that his command had been devastated and would be out of the mainstream of combat for some time to come.

After the
phone calls
, Harris wrote out his letter of resignation and passed
it into the mail room on his w
ay back to see the
latest
numbers.

With only a few aircraft still in the sky, the board made awful reading.

Two hundred and forty-nine confirmed losses, each loss marking the death, injury or capture of a crew.

Down and safe were
f
ive hundred and ten.

One hundred a
nd
thirty bombers were yet to be accounted for.

A quick look at the squadron boards revealed five
virgin white and
blank, the teller
s
either
waiting anxiously for news or devastated, having had the very worst sort.

A wave of calls flooded into the centre, as more bombers made safety, either in
England
or airfields through
France
and the
Low Countries
.

Air-sea rescue
launches
were hard at work in the
North Sea
and Channel, Royal Naval MTB’s and the like pressed into service to help.

An incredible headache overtook Harris
,
and he sought out his private quarters for some rest
,
before
beginning the
piecing together the events of the night.

The true cost of
Operation
‘Casino’ was not fully appreciated for some time.

All in all, five hundred and ninety-one bombers returned home, some untouched, some badly knocked about.

Two hundred and sixty-nine aircraft had been confirmed as lost, some over
Germany
or crashed in friendly territory. Some
fell
apart
just short of
their home runways
,
and
more
ditched in the
N
orth Sea
, consigned
to a watery end.

A Short Stirling, recently returned
to operations
from mothballs, savaged by flak and flying blindly, eventually succumbed to its wounds and crashed outside the German
village
of
Marbeck
. Unfortunately
for the Allies
, it landed on top of the 14
th
Nebelwerfer Regiment, part of the deploying German Republican forces. Casualties were extreme, both in men and materiel.

Another RAF bomber, a Lancaster III, badly damaged and abandoned by her crew, finally came to earth in
Groni
n
gen
, destroying an orphanage
,
and causing over two hundred civilian deaths.

Such events were not confined to the Allied side of the lines, as a brand-new Avro Lincoln I
came to ground
in a field
on the northern bank of the Hemmelsdorfer See,
destroying
itself
,
and spreading its remaining load of fuel all over the headquarters of the
Soviet
22nd Army, sending the entire
Soviet
Army’s
hierarchy into a fiery
Valhalla
.

There were twenty-nine
bombers
still missing
,
and it was some days before
several
aircraft were reported as landing safely
as far away as
Sweden
,
Switzerland
and
Finland
, where they were interned.

Eight Squadrons had been totally wiped out

After the war, RAF investigations were unable to progress all the remaining twenty-one missing and
many of the
unresolved losses were only put to bed by accidental discovery or the intensive work of historians
, decades later
.

To date, six aircraft remain unaccounted for.

Soviet
losses totalled five night-fighters,
sixty
-seven AA guns of varying types and
five
hundred and sixty-three casualties.

The reactions in Nordhausen and
Versailles
could not have been more different.

Elation
and celebration
.

Shock
and horror
.

Nazarbayeva
awoke and
stretched contentedly
, her eyes taking in the dimly illuminated
room and all it had to offer.

The small vase on the drawer unit, placed there earlier by a giggling Nurse Lubova
,
in respo
nse to a woman to woman request, its simple woodland flowers offering up the promise of rich colours even in the low light.

The to
p secret folder
lay
to one side
,
a
single fallen petal casting its
modest shadow
on the label
. Inside were details on the progress of her misinformation programme, and how it was to bear fruit in the skies over
Northern Germany
that very night.

A neatly
hung
uniform, that of a
full
Colonel of the GRU, proudly topped by the Gold Star, sharing the
recently arrived
clothes
stand
with that of a
much-decorated
Starshina of the Red Army.

The armchair where they had sat together
,
and
talked of the loss of their son
.

At the window, the silhouette of her husband, naked, toned,
still
damp with the sweat of their exertions.

“Yuri.”

Her husband turned and smiled.

“Ah
,
my wife awakes. How you can just drop off to sleep like that amazes me
,
my sweet.”

The sheet was in her hands and she raised it to her face,
only
her ey
es exposed and full of mischief, her voice that of a new bride on her first night.

“Your exertions exhausted me
,
my husband
. You are so powerful and needy.”

He smiled again, deciding whether or not to play the game. The mischievous soldier-husband nearly won, but the needy lover-husband proved too strong.

“Needy, my sweet?”

He took hold of the sheet and pulled it gently down, liberating her face, then her shoulders, before travelling all the way and settling on the floor at the foot of the bed.

“How can I look at such beauty and not need, not want, not desire?”

His silhouette altered in such a way that Tatiana merely beckoned him forward and onto the bed, opening her legs and entwining him as he slipped inside her and they started making love for the third time.

Harris replaced the
red
receiver
,
breathing
a sigh of relief.

His resignation was not accepted and he would be left in charge of the recovery and re-assembly of Bomber Command.

The preliminary written report was on his desk, and had formed the basis of his telephone conversation with Prime Minister Clement Attlee.

In truth, the figures were beyond comprehension.

Two hundred and seventy-five aircraft
now
confirmed lost, and along with them over one and a half thousand air crew, either dead, maimed or prisoners.

‘Unmitigated disaster.’

That had been Attlee’s
shocked
understatement, wholly accurate
,
but insufficient to carry the weight of the terrible
events.

Whilst restoring his command was his number one priority there was undoubtedly another matter which needed addressing.

Standing
up and turning
to the window, he looked into a cloudless sky and asked a question of no-one in particular.

“How did they know we were coming?”

A question that was already taxing
other
minds
across
Europe
.

Attlee replaced the receiver with extreme care, his face white, the news he had just been given so appalling as to beggar belief.

Not in even the
darkest days of the German War
had such losses, so many young
men, been taken by the Gods of W
ar.

His hands were trembling, hindering his efforts to charge his pipe.

The
other occupant
of the room
waited silently, knowing that the Prime Minister would reveal all when
he was ready
.

That did not prevent
Sir Richard Percival
Carruthers, Attlee’s personal private secretary, from acting to precipitate the conversation.

He placed a healthy measure of single malt in front of his leader, sampling his ow
n, his concern mounting as he watched
the shaken man consume his
with unusual speed
.

The silence continued, even after Carruthers had supplied a refill, the PM’s mind occupied solely with working through the problem.

Attlee drained his glass
again
and positioned it neatly on the table, moving blotting pad, pen stand and all the other writing accoutrements into perfect position, squared off, symmetrical, much like his thoughts that had just been perfectly placed into position in the greater run of things.

“Richard, I need you to perform your country a great service.”

Intruiged, Sir Richard Carruthers listened.

At first
,
in horror
, as Attlee repeated all the awful details of the disaster that had befallen RAF Bomber Command.

Secondly
, with concern
, as the poor military situation in
Europe
was summarised.

Thirdly,
in curiosity,
as Attlee outlined an intruiging proposal.

Already
,
the disaster was having a knock-on effect, the USAAF bomber missions for the day having been scrubbed, leaving solely fighter and interdiction sorties in place

Eisenhower had finished a very difficult briefing session with Air Chief Marshall
Tedder;
one that left him in no doubt that Bomber Command would take some time to recover.

An investigation had started
,
and had already looked at the intelligence on which the raid was based, deciding the no action was to be taken on such reports until further notice.

Whilst the loss of so many aircraft and crews was awful, other matters became more pressing as the morning wore on, reports of
Soviet
gains arriving, reflecting an increase in pressure across the front as a whole.

The situation map
illustrated
the changes, or at least
,
it was
constantly
attended by staff personnel
,
desperate to keep the map current as the situation started to become extremely fluid.