The Dam Busters (4 page)

For the fast and last time he saw the executive lose his temper. The man shot to his feet, smashed his fist on the desk and shouted “Mutiny!” Smashed his fist down again with another “Mutiny!” And again with a third explosive “Mutiny!” He subsided, red and quivering, and Wallis walked out of the room. He had lunch somewhere but does not remember where, and afterwards went and told the whole story to Sir Thomas Merton, one of the Supply Ministry’s inventions tribunal. Merton promised support, but Wallis came away still depressed, knowing of nothing more he could do; it seemed too late now to organise things for the coming May, and after a couple of days he was resigned to it.

That was the day, February 26, he got a summons to the office of one of the cautious ones, and there he also found the senior executive who had shouted “Mutiny!” Proceedings opened by the cautious one saying, a little stiffly:

“Mr. Wallis, orders have been received that your dams project is to go ahead immediately with a view to an operation at all costs no later than May.”

CHAPTER IV A SQUADRON IS BORN

AFTER battling for so long, Wallis, in the weeks that followed, sometimes ruefully thought he had got more action than he could stand. Life was work from dawn till midnight, planning, draughting, thinking and discussing, grabbing a sandwich with one hand while the work went on.

He told his workers briefly what he wanted them to do, but not what the bombs were to do, or when, or where. Only he, Harris and a selected few others knew that, and apart from them a curtain of secrecy came down. Each craftsman worked on one part and knew nothing of the others. One of the first things Wallis himself had to do was to work out at exactly what speed and height the aeroplane should fly when they dropped the bombs, so that the bombs would reach the dam wall at the right height and speed.

The full-size bomb was to be a steel sphere seven feet in girth. Roy Chadwick, chief Avro designer, started taking the bomb doors off Lancasters and doing other strange things to them so they could carry it. Explosives experts, tactical authorities, secret service men and hundreds of others had a part in it, and over Germany every day a fast Mosquito flew 25,000 feet over the dams taking photographs. Deep in the underground vaults of Bomber Command men studied the photographs through thick magnifying glasses to check the level of the rising water and the defences. If the secret leaked out they would see the extra flak and the raid would have to be called off. It was going to be suicidal enough as it was. There seemed to be at least six gun positions around the Moehne alone, and that was no matter for comfort because the bombs would have to be dropped from very low level, so low that a pilot could lean out and almost dangle his fingers in the water. They would have to fly between two towers on top of the dam, and some of the guns were in these towers.

The Mosquitoes flew a devious way and crossed the dams as though by accident so the Germans would not be suspicious. An ugly sign appeared in the first few days: photographs showed the anti-torpedo boom in front of the Moehne was being repaired; it had been loose and untidy, and now it was being tightened. Nothing else appeared to be happening though, and after a while it was reasonable to assume that it was only a periodical check. While the work pressed on in England, it seemed that the Germans were doing nothing significant.

At his headquarters in the wood Air Marshal Arthur Harris (“Bert” to his friends and “Bomber” to the public) had been pondering how the attack should be made—and who should make it. On March 15 he sent for Air Vice-Marshal the Honourable Ralph Cochrane, who two days before had become Air Officer Commanding No,. 5 (Bomber) Group.

“I’ve got a job for you, Cocky,” Harris said and told him about Wallis’s weird bomb and what he proposed to do with it. At the end he said: “I know it sounds far-fetched, but I think it has a good chance.”

Cochrane said: “Well, sir, I’ve known Walk’s for twenty-five years. He’s a wonderful engineer and I’ve never known him not to produce what he says he will.”

“I hope he does it again now,” Harris said. “You know how he works. I want you to organise the raid. Ask for anything you want, as long as it’s reasonable.”

Cochrane thought for a moment.

“It’s going to need some good aircrews,” he said. “I think I’d better screen one of my squadrons right away and start them on intensive training.”

“I don’t want to do that,” Harris said. “I don’t want to take a single squadron out of the line if I can help it, or interfere with any of the main force. What I have in mind is a new squadron, say, of experienced people who’re just finishing a tour. Some of the keen chaps won’t mind doing another trip. Can you find enough in your group?”

“Yes, sir.” Cochrane asked Harris if he wanted anyone in particular to command the new squadron, and Harris said:

“Yes, Gibson.”

Cochrane nodded in satisfaction, and ten minutes later, deep in thought, he was driving back to the old Victorian mansion outside Grantham that was 5 Group Headquarters. There could probably have been no better choice than Cochrane for planning the raid. A spare man with a lean face, his manner was crisp and decisive, perfectly reflecting his mind. The third son of a noble Scottish family, he was climbing to the top on his own ability; he had perhaps the most incisive brain in the R.A.F. His god was efficiency and he sought it uncompromisingly—almost ruthlessly according to some of his men, who were afraid of him, but his aircrews would do anything he asked, knowing that it would be meticulously planned.

Moreover, Cochrane knew Wallis well; had worked with him in the Royal Naval Air Service in World War I, flying his experimental airships and testing the world’s first airship mooring mast, which Wallis had designed. Ever since then Cochrane had had a quick sympathy for the scientific approach.

That night a nuggetty little man with a square, handsome face, named Guy Gibson, took off on the last trip of his third tour. If he got back he was due for leave and a rest, having been on ops almost constantly since the war started. The target was Stuttgart and his Lancaster was laden with one of the new 8,ooo-lb. “blockbusters” (not the penetrating “earthquake” type that Wallis envisaged, but bombs had made startling strides in the past year).

An engine failed on the way to Stuttgart and the aircraft would not hold her height. Gibson eased her out of the stream, dropping towards the ground, but headed on. The last trip of a tour is an ordeal with its hopes of a six-months’ reprieve. Before take-off the reprieve seems so near and yet so far, and waiting to get it over is not pleasant. Gibson took a chance rather than turn back and go through the waiting again.

Over Stuttgart he had the other three engines shaking the aircraft at full power and managed to drag up to a safe enough height to drop his bomb, then dived to the dark anonymity of earth and hugged the ground all the way back. That was Gibson’s 173rd trip. He was a wing commander with the D.S.O. and D.F.C. Aged twenty-five.

He woke late, head still ringing with the engine noise, and lay curled up, half thinking, half dreaming of leave in Cornwall. That morning his leave was cancelled and, to his dismay, he was posted to 5 Group Headquarters.

A day or so later he was shown into Cochrane’s office and saluted smartly.

“Ah, Gibson,” Cochrane said. “Firstly, my congratulations on the bar to your D.S.O.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Would you like to do one more trip?”

Gibson gulped and said, a little warily:

“What kind of trip, sir?”

“An important one. I can’t tell you any more about it now except that you would command the operation.”

Gibson said slowly, “Yes, I—I think so, sir,” thinking of the flak and the fighters he hoped he had finished with for a time.

“Good ; that’s fine. I’ll let you know more as soon as I can,” and a moment later Gibson was outside the door, wondering what it was all about. He waited two days before Cochrane sent for him again, and this time another man was with him, Group Captain Charles Whitworth, who commanded the bomber base at Scampton, a stocky, curly-haired man of about thirty, with a long list of operations behind him and a D.S.O. and D.F.C. on his tunic. Gibson knew him and liked him.

Cochrane was friendly. “Sit down,” he said and held out a cigarette. “I asked you the other day if you’d care to do another raid and you said you would, but I want to warn you that this will be no ordinary sortie and it can’t be done for at least two months.”

Gibson thought: “It’s the
Tirpitz.
Why did I say yes!” The 45,000-ton “unsinkable” battleship was lying in a Norwegian fiord, a permanent menace to the Russia convoys and a lethal target to tackle.

Cochrane was still talking. “Training for this raid is so important that the Commander-in-Chief wants a special squadron formed. I want you to form it. You’d better use Whitworth’s main base at Scampton. As far as aircrews are concerned, you’ll want good ones; you’d better pick them yourself. I’m telling all the squadrons they’ll have to give up some of their best crews. I’m afraid they won’t like it, so try and take men who are near the end of their tours. There’s a lot of urgency in this because you haven’t got very long and training is going to be very important. Go to it as fast as you can and try and get your aircraft flying in four days.”

“Well, er… what sort of training, sir?” Gibson asked. “And… what sort of target?”

“Low flying,” Cochrane said. “You’ve got to be able to low-fly at night till it’s second nature. No, I can’t tell you the target yet. That’s secret, but you’ve all got to be perfect at low flying. At night. It’s going to be the only way, and I think you can do it. You’re going to a place where it’d be wrong to send a single squadron at the normal height by itself.”

Gibson knew what that meant. Germany! A single squadron at 15,000 feet would get all the night fighters. It was not so bad for the main force, the stream of hundreds of bombers; they confused the enemy radar, dispersed the fighters, and there was protection in numbers. Not so with a lone squadron. But low level, “on the deck,” yes. Well, maybe! Well, it was going to be low level anyway. Over Germany! He knew a man named Martin who knew all about low flying over Germany. Gibson had met him when Martin was being decorated for it.

Outside the door Whitworth said, “See you at Scampton in a couple of days. I’ll get things fixed up for you. I imagine you’ll be having about seven hundred men.”

Somewhat bewildered, Gibson went off to the S.O.A. to see how one went about forming a new squadron. A staff officer helped him pick aircrew from the group lists. Gibson knew most of the pilots—he got the staff man to promise him Martin and help him pick the navigators, engineers, bomb aimers, wireless operators and gunners ; when they had finished they had 147 names—twenty-one complete crews, seven to a crew. Gibson had his own crew; they were just finishing their tour too, but they all wanted to come with him.

The Staff Officer Personnel told him how many men of different trades he wanted for his ground crews and promised to siphon off picked men from other squadrons and post them to Scampton in forty-eight hours.

The equipment officer promised to deliver ten Lancasters to Scampton within two days. Just for a start. More would follow. With them would come the spare spark plugs and tools, starter motors and drip trays, bomb dollies and winches, dope and paint and chocks and thermos flasks. Gibson was startled by the unending list. Another man promised the thousand and one items for the men: blankets and lorries and bootlaces, beer and socks, toilet paper and so on. He was two days on these details, helped by Cochrane’s deputy, the S.A.S.O., Group Captain Harry Satterly, a big, smooth-faced man who was excellent at detail; and then it was all done— except for one thing.

“What squadron are you?” Satterly asked.

“What d’you mean, sir?”

“What number? You’ve got to have a number.”

“Oh,” said Gibson, “where d’you get that?”

“Somewhere in Air Ministry,” Satterly said, “but they probably don’t work so fast there. I’ll get on to them and fix it up. Meantime you’d better call yourselves ‘X Squadron’.”

* * *

Just before dinner on March 21, Wing Commander Guy Gibson, D.S.O., D.F.C., commander of “X”, the paper squadron, arrived at Scampton to take formal command. In the officers’ mess he found some of his crews already arrived and the mess waiters looking curiously at them as they stood around with pints of beer in their fists. It was obvious they were not to be an ordinary squadron; the average age was about twenty-two but they were clearly veterans. D.F.C. ribbons were everywhere; they had all done one tour, and some had done two. Gibson moved among them, followed by the faithful Nigger, his black Labrador dog, who rarely left his heels.

From his old 106 Squadron, Gibson had brought three crews as well as his own—those of Hopgood, Shannon and Burpee. Hopgood was English, fair and good looking except for a long front tooth that stuck out at an angle. Dave Shannon, D.F.C., was a baby-faced twenty-year-old from Australia, but did not look any more than sixteen, so he was growing a large moustache to look older.

Gibson spotted Micky Martin with satisfaction. They had met at Buckingham Palace when Gibson was getting his D.S.O. and the King was pinning on the first of Martin’s D.F.Cs. Though he came from Sydney, Martin was in the R.A.F., slight but good looking, with a wild glint in his eyes and a monstrous moustache that ended raggedly out by his ears. At the Palace they had talked shop and Martin had explained his low-flying system.

He had worked it out that if you flew lower than most bombers you would avoid the fighters; lower still and the heavy flak would all burst well above. And if you got right down to tree-top height you would be gone before the light flak could draw a bead on you. There was still the risk of balloons, but Martin reasoned there would not be any balloons along main roads or railways, so he followed those. He had had the same two gunners for two years. Toby Foxlee and Tammy Simpson both fellow-Australians, and on their low-level junkets they had become expert at picking off searchlights. Simpson and Foxlee had both come with him; he’d also brought an experienced navigator, a lean, long-chinned Australian called Jack Leggo, and his bomb aimer, Bob Hay, also Australian, had been a bombing expert at Group. Leggo was to be navigation officer of the new squadron, and Hay was to be bombing leader. It is unlikely that there was a finer crew in Bomber Command; hence Gibson’s pleasure.

He had chosen “Dinghy” Young as his senior flight commander . Young had already ditched twice in his two tours, and both times got back home in his rubber dinghy. Bred in California, educated at Cambridge, he was a large, calm man whose favourite trick was to swallow a pint of beer without drawing breath.

Les Munro was a New Zealander, tall, blue-chinned and solemn, a little older than the others. He was standing by the bar looking into space when Gibson located him. “Glad to see you, Les,” Gibson said. “I see you’re setting a good example already, drinking a little and thinking a lot.” Munro upended his pint and drained it. “No, sir,” he said, “thinking a little and drinking a lot.”