The Dam Busters (14 page)

CHAPTER XIV THE UNAPPEASING OF MUNICH

ON April 4 Cheshire reported to Cochrane that he was ready with the Mosquito. Cochrane rang Harris and asked permission for his whole group to operate by themselves, led by 617 to mark the target, which was to be a large aircraft factory just outside Toulouse. Harris agreed, and next night they took off.

Cheshire found his Mosquito handled delightfully. A flare force lit up the factory and Cheshire dived fast and low over it, but, not satisfied with his positioning, pulled up sharply without dropping his markers. Heavy flak opened up on him as he corkscrewed away. He would almost certainly have been hit in a Lancaster, but the shells did not even scratch the Mosquito’s paint. He dived again, once more was not satisfied and pulled up in a hail of shells. The third time his markers fell in the centre of the buildings, and again he climbed steeply away, unscathed. At 10,000 feet the squadrons moved in. Munro put an 8,ooo-pounder right on the markers and the rest of the bombs slathered the spot.

In the morning a recce aircraft found the factory flattened and only an occasional crater in the fields beyond.

Four days later 617 continued the experiment, going alone, led by Cheshire in the Mosquito, to attack the biggest German air park and signals depot in France, at St. Cyr, some two miles west of Versailles. Cheshire put his nose nearly straight down from 5,000 feet, let his markers go from 700, and they lobbed on the western corner of the target. He ordered the bombers in and soon rolling coils of smoke hid the target.

Cheshire landed as dawn was breaking and found Cochrane in the de-briefing room; he had been waiting up all night to see how the raid went and took Cheshire aside.

“That’s the end of the experiment, Cheshire. I’m satisfied you can do it low in Mosquitoes now, and we’re going to start thinking of the big targets. I’m getting you four new Mosquitoes. Train three or four picked pilots to use them and be quick about it.”

The four Mosquitoes arrived that afternoon, and in the next six days McCarthy, Shannon, Kearns and Fawke spent their waking hours flying them. They were to fly Mosquitoes exclusively from now on and their crews were split up. Shannon kept the tough Sumpter as his navigator. Danny Walker stayed as squadron navigation officer, Goodale went off for a well-deserved rest, and Buckley joined another crew. The lanky and good-natured Concave had won a D.F.C. and Bar as a wireless operator, which is not far short of a miracle, because decorations for good work by a crew usually went first to the pilot, then to the navigator and bomb aimer. Or to a gunner who shot enemy aircraft down, or an engineer who had a chance to keep battered engines going in the air. A wireless operator had little chance.

Decorations were a vexed question because there was no way of equitable distribution. Cheshire had strong views on the subject; as usual, unorthodox views but extraordinarily perceptive. Generally he divided courageous aircrews into two categories:
(a)
men with acute imagination who realised they would probably die and who forced themselves to go on, and (
b
) men who, though intelligent, could shut their minds off from imagination and carry on without acute forebodings of the future,, Cheshire puts himself in the second group and, typically, regards the first group as the braver men.

“That’s the highest form of courage,” he said once. “They have a hell of a time but keep going. Usually they’re not the spectacular types and they don’t win the flash awards, but they’re the bravest.”

He told me once: “Decorations are not particularly a test of courage but a test of success. There aren’t many awards for failure; a few, but not many, no matter what bravery was shown.”

On April 18 Cheshire reported to Cochrane that the Mosquito crews were all ready, and that night 617 marked for 5 Group againt Juvisy marshalling yards, eleven miles south of Paris.

Munro’s flares lit the area beautifully: Cheshire, Fawke, Shannon and Kearns dived to 400 feet and lobbed their spot fires into the middle of the web of rails, though one bounced outside. It all went like clockwork. 617 bombed the spot fires accurately, as usual, and then the rest of 5 Group, 200 Lancasters, surged in and excelled themselves. They were used only to area bombing and not precision bombing, but this time, with the bright aiming points of the markers, they put nearly all their bombs in the target area. Some fell outside on the marker that bounced but morning reconnaissance showed the ragged end of rails in acres of erupted earth where a thousand craters overlapped each other. (It was eighteen months after the war before the yard was again in action.)

From the spot fire that bounced, Cheshire learned the importance of releasing the markers before the Mosquitoes started to flatten out of the dive, and that was another step towards perfection of the technique.

Once again 617 lost no aircraft and the Mosquitoes did not have a single hole among them. To Cheshire and Cochrane— and to Harris too—it was further confirmation of their ideas.

Cochrane flew to Woodhall, saw Cheshire privately in Cheshire’s office and, as usual, wasted no words :

“Now you can have a crack at Germany. Tomorrow you’re going to Brunswick… One Group as well as Five Group, so you’ll be leading about four hundred aircraft. Pathfinders will drop flares and you’ll mark with red spots.”

There was one alternative, he said. If cloud hid the target, special radar Pathfinders would mark “blind” with green spots instead.

* * *

The first P.F.F. flares went down over Brunswick, but Cheshire could see no target (rail yards) by their light. More flares went down seven miles north, and over that spot Kearns and Fawke saw the target and dropped their red spots “on the button”. Cheshire gave the order to bomb, and the first bombs were just exploding when the reserve radar Pathfinders ran into cloud near-by and dropped their green spots on fields three miles away. Most of the main force, according to orders, turned for them.

Cheshire called till he was blue in the face, but the radio was jammed and only a few aircraft picked up his message. Nearly all the bombs fell on the wrong markers out in the fields.

After they landed back at Woodhall, Cochrane flew over in his Proctor and Cheshire started apologising for the mix-up. Cochrane cut in:

“All right, Cheshire. Don’t you worry about that. You did your part perfectly. We’ve learned a bit more from it and we’ll see the trouble doesn’t happen again. How do you feel about Munich?”

“As soon as you like, sir. We’re ready.”

“I’ve been on to Air Chief Marshal Harris. If the weather is all right you’re going tomorrow night, leading the whole group again. You’ll go for the rail yards.”

Together they planned it, and this time it looked as though it could not miss. Bomber Command was to raid Karlsruhe half an hour before to draw the fighters. 617 was to lead 5 Group towards Switzerland as a feint; six Lancasters were to swerve south towards Milan dropping bundles of “window” (thin strips of metal foil) to delude German radar into thinking 5 Group was heading for Italy. Just before the Group reached Munich, radar Pathfinders were to drop flares, and Cheshire and the Mosquitoes were to mark, the rest of 617 were to drop more markers from medium level with the S.A.B.S. in case the early markers were blown out, and then the 200 Lancasters were to bomb.

One point worried Cheshire. “Munich is about as far as a Mosquito can get without overload tanks,” he said. “I’ve asked for them but they haven’t come yet. We’re not going to have enough margin for bad winds or upset timing without them.”

“Give Group a sharp nudge about them,” Cochrane said.

“I’m going down to the C.-in-C. with the plan.”

Cheshire phoned Group, and they said they would do all they could. He phoned them again next morning and was dismayed when they told him the tanks were in acutely short supply and other Mosquito units had priorities.

Cheshire got hold of Pat Kelly, his navigator, and they worked out a new plan for the Mosquitoes: to fly first to Manston, in Kent, a hundred miles nearer the target, pour in all the petrol they could and fly straight to Munich across all the defences. Kelly plotted the distance, worked out their range from Manston and looked up grimly.

“If everything goes dead to time—which I’ve seldom seen —and if the winds are ah
¹
in our favour—which I’ve never seen—we might just get back, but probably won’t.”

Cheshire went to a high officer at base and explained respectfully that, even taking off from Manston, he doubted if the four marking Mosquitoes would get back. It was usual to have a couple of hours’ petrol in reserve—at least—to allow for contingencies. With the very best conditions they might arrive back with a few minutes’ petrol. Personally he had never had to fly on a raid in such conditions. Nor did he know anyone who did. What should he do?

The answer was not inspiring.

“If you can’t do this marking in Mosquitoes,” the high officer said, “you’ll have to do it in a Lancaster. Whatever you do the raid has to go on.”

Cheshire said, “Yes, sir.”

He went back and collected the four Mosquito crews. They got a preliminary Met. report: heavy cloud—possible ice cloud—over the western half of Germany; perhaps clear over Munich. At 14,000 feet the winds might be reasonably favourable. The four navigators bent over their calculations and looked up grimly.

Kelly said, “If everything goes perfectly we might get back to Mansion.” They all knew that a raid rarely went perfectly.

One of them exploded: “Hell sir, we don’t mind sticking our necks out over the defences. That’s just part of the job, but we can’t see any point in such an unnecessary risk. What sort of fools are we supposed to be?”

Cheshire said, “I’m sorry, but we’ve got to go.” There was a brief silence and one of them said, “All right.”

The four Mosquitoes flew down to Manston and were refuelled and parked at take-off point so they would waste no fuel taxi-ing. Sitting silently over dinner with the others, Cheshire got a phone call from Cochrane.

“I’m. deeply sorry about the overload tanks,” Cochrane said. “Can you make it?”

“We’ll have a go, sir. I think it will be all right.”

“I just want to let you know,” Cochrane said, “I’ve had a word with the C.-in-C. When you get back he’s giving the whole squadron a week’s leave.”

Cheshire went and told the others, and Kelly said acidly, “Fat lot of good that’s going to do
us.”
Cheshire had never seen them like that. They seemed almost on the verge of mutiny, not because they were too scared (they were scared all right, but so is nearly every airman before a raid), but this time it
was
unnecessary.

Around dusk Cheshire said, “Well, let’s get it over.” They walked out silently; it was clear over England, the sun dipping under the horizon and the sky above flaming orange. Cheshire said, “What a glorious sunset!” From the others a sullen silence, and then Shannon, without even lifting his eyes towards the west, said, “Damn the sunset. I’m only interested in the sunme.”

They took off without warming up, climbed straight on course to 14,000 feet and over the North Sea ran into heavy cloud. * * *

They were coming up to the Rhine. Or hoped they were. Cloud lay on the earth like a deep, drifting ocean, rolling up unbroken to 17,000 feet, and in the hooded glow of the cockpits each pilot found comfort in the dim shape of his navigator beside him, feeling they were outcasts sealed in a small world. Beyond the numbing thunder of engines lay nothing but blackness and they only sensed that somewhere in a few square miles of sky they were together, unseen. Cheshire broke radio silence to ask Shannon how he was finding the weather and felt his scalp prickle as a voice out of the past spoke in his earphones, “Is that you, sir?” He recognised it instantly, through the static and the careful anonymity… Micky Martin.

He called back, “Is that you, Mick?”

“Yessir.”

“Where on earth
are
you?”

“Oh, I’m around.”

“What the hell are you doing?”

“Sticking my neck out for you types.”

(Martin was a hundred miles away in another Mosquito, a night fighter, his job being to “beat up” German night fighter fields, encouraging the fighters to stay on the ground while the bombers plastered Karlsruhe and Munich; another part of Cochrane’s planning.)

One wastes no time in radio chatter over enemy soil. Plotting stations need few seconds for a “fix”. Cheshire said, “Good luck to you, Mick,” and Martin answered laconically, “Good luck to you too. Be seeing you.”

The other Mosquitoes heard it and flew on a little more cheerfully. It seemed an omen somehow, but whether for good or bad they were not quite sure.

Apparently it was for good! The clouds thinned, winds stayed kind and exactly on zero hour they came out over Munich. No mistaking it; the flare force had arrived and massed guns were vomiting upwards. At 14,000 feet the flashes of bursts split the night and lines of red balls were marching up from the lighter guns. There must have been a hundred searchlights; pale fingers probing the dark, lighting now and then on aircraft which glinted like ants and turned to burrow into the crevices of the night. Mostly they vanished, but one was caught in a second beam, and a third. They saw it coned and held as it dived and turned and climbed, a trapped little ant. The flak hunted it; in the glare they saw the brighter flashes all round and then the ribbon of flame as the Lancaster dived again; this time the nose never lifted.

A flare abruptly glowed in the darkness, then another, a third—five… one by one they lit till thirty hung flaming in the sky over the naked city, so that Cheshire recognised from the photographs the kidney-shaped park, the long lake, drilled streets of pygmy houses and the lined acres of the rail yards. He shouted over the R/T, “Marker Leader going in” and peeled off from 10,000 feet, holding the nose down till the little Mosquito was moving into the flak faster than she had ever travelled. Sliding past 5,000 feet he lined her up on the rail yards, focused his mind on them, still aware in a curiously detached way of shells, balloon cables and searchlight dazzle, hoped he would miss them and coldly shut his mind to them. The little plane was shivering with the headlong surge and the busy fury of the engines; Cheshire barely heard the screaming noise : she was twisting in the rising speed against the trim and he was coaxing her to arrow dead straight in the dive, forcing himself to wait for the dragging seconds till he suddenly jabbed the bomb button and eased back on the stick. He felt her lifting out instantly, the mounting “g” ramming him hard down into his seat, a phantom load dragging at his lips, his cheeks, his eyeballs and his blood, heavier and heavier, till his vision was greying out as the Mosquito flattened low over the roof-tops, curved up and climbed nimbly away. He let her lift into the darkness over the flares before he rolled her out on one wing, looked over the side and saw his markers, two red eyes glowing in the rail yards.