The Dam Busters (7 page)

“It’s all right for tonight, sir.” He gave a definite prediction of clear weather over Germany.

“What?” said Cochrane. “No ifs, buts and probablies?” and “The Gremlin” looked mildly cautious just for a moment and took the plunge. “No, sir. It’s going to be all right.”

Cochrane went out to his car and drove off towards Scamp ton.

The Tannoy sounded about four o’clock, ordering
all
617 crews to the briefing room, and soon there were 133 hushed young men sitting on the benches (two crews were out because of illness).

Gibson repeated what he had told the others the previous night, and Wallis, in his earnest, slightly pedantic way, told them about the dams and what their destruction would do. Cochrane finished with a short, crisp talk.

The final line-up was :

Formation 1 : Nine aircraft in three waves, taking off with ten minutes between waves:

Gibson,
Hopgood,
Martin.

Young,
Astell,
Maltby.

Maudsiay,
Knight,
Shannon.

They were to attack the Moehne, and after the Moehne was breached those who had not bombed would go on to the Eder.

Formation 2: One wave in loose formation:

McCarthy,
Byers,
Barlow,
Rice,
Munro.

They were to attack the Sorpe, crossing the coast by the northern route as a diversion to split the German defences.

Formation 3 :

Townsend,
Brown,
Anderson,
Ottley,
Burpee.

They would take off later as the mobile reserve.

Supper in the mess was quiet, the calm before the storm.

No one said much. The non-flying people thought it was to be a training flight, but the crews, who knew it was going to be business—probably sticky—could not say so and there was a faint atmosphere of strain.

With a woman’s wit Anne Fowler realised it was to be the real thing. She noticed the crews were having eggs. They often had an egg before a raid, and always after they landed. Most of the others did not notice it, but she started worrying about Shannon.

Dinghy Young said to Gibson, “Can I have your next egg if you don’t come back? “But that was the usual chestnut before an “op” and Gibson brushed it aside with a few amiably insulting remarks.

In twos and threes they drifted down to the hangar and started to change. It was not eight o’clock yet; still an hour to take-off and still broad daylight. Martin stuffed his little koala bear into a pocket of his battle-dress jacket and buttoned the flap. It was a grey furry thing about 4 inches high with black button eyes, given to him by his mother as a mascot when the war started. It had as many operational hours as he had.

They drifted over to the grass by the apron and lay in the sun, smoking and quietly talking, waiting. Anne was with Shannon. Fay, the other W.A.A.F. officer, was talking to Martin’s crew. Dinghy Young was tidying up his office, just as a matter of course. He had no premonition. Munro seemed half asleep in a deck chair.

Gibson drove up and walked over to Powell.

“Chiefy, I want you to bury Nigger outside my office at midnight. Will you do that?”

“Of course, sir.” Powell was startled at the gesture from the hard-bitten Gibson. Gibson did not tell him that he would be about 50 feet over Germany then, not far from the Ruhr. He had it in hlo mind that he and Nigger might be going into the ground about the same time.

Gibson found himself wishing it were time to go and knew they were all wishing the same. It would be all right once they were in the air. It always was. At ten to nine he said clearly, “Well, chaps, my watch says time to go.” Bodies stirred on the grass with elaborate casualness, tossed their parachutes into the flight trucks, climbed in after them, and the trucks moved off round the perimeter track to the hardstandings. Shannon had gone back to the locker room for a moment and when he came out his crew, the only ones left, were waiting impatiently. The bald-headed Yorkshireman, Jack Buckley, said like a father to his small son, “Have you cleaned your teeth David?” Shannon grinned, hoisted himself elegantly into the flight truck and then they had all gone. Shannon had one of the best crews. Buckley, older than most, of a wealthy family, was his rear gunner and a wild Yorkshireman. Danny Walker was an infallible navigator, a Canadian, dark, quiet and intensely likeable. Sumpter, the bomb aimer, had been a guardsman and was tougher than a prize-fighter. Brian Goodale, the wireless op., was so tall and thin and bent he was known universally as “Concave.” And in the air the babyish Shannon was the absolute master, with a scorching tongue when he felt like it.

At exactly ten past nine a red Very light curled up from Gibson’s aircraft, the signal for McCarthy’s five aircraft to start; the northern route was longer and they were taking off ten minutes early. Seconds later there was a spurt of blue smoke behind Munro’s aircraft as his port inner engine started. One by one the engines came to life. Geoff Rice’s engines were turning; Barlow’s, then Byers’. The knot of people by the hangar saw a truck rushing at them across the field, and before it came to a stop big McCarthy jumped out and ran at them, roaring like a bull, his red face sweaty, the sandy hair falling over his forehead. In a murderous rage he yelled:

“My aircraft’s u/s and there’s no deviation card in the spare. Where are those useless instruments jerks ! “

The 15-stone Yank had found his own Lancaster, “Q for Queenie,” out of action with leaking hydraulics, rushed his crew over to the spare plane, “T for Tom,” and found the little card giving the compass deviations missing from it. No hope of accurate flying without it. If McCarthy had met one of the instrument people then he would probably have strangled him.

Chiefy Powell had gone running into the instrument section and found the missing card. He dashed up to McCarthy shouting, “Here it is, sir,” and McCarthy grabbed it, well behind schedule now, and turning to run back to the truck, scooped up his parachute from the tarmac where he’d thrown it, but his hand missed the canvas loop handle and he yanked it up by the D-ring of the rip-cord. The pack flaps sprang back in a white blossom as the silk billowed out and trailed after him, and he let out a roar of unbearable fury.

Powell was running for the crew room, but McCarthy snarled, “I’ll go without one.” He jumped into the truck but before the driver could move off Powell came running up with another parachute, and McCarthy grabbed it through the cabin and shot off across the field. There was a swelling roar from the south side; Munro’s Lancaster was rolling, picking up speed, and then it was low in the air, sliding over the north boundary, tucking its wheels up into the big inboard nacelles. Less than a minute later, as McCarthy got to his aircraft, Rice was rolling too, followed by Barlow and Byers.

At precisely 9.25, Gibson in “G for George.” Martin in “P for Popsie,” and Hopgood, in “M for Mother,” punched the buttons of the booster coils and the wisps of blue smoke spurted as the engines whined and spun explosively, first the port inners, the starboard inners, the port outers and the starboard outers. They were going through their cockpit drill while the crews settled at take-off stations, running the engines up to zero boost and testing the magnetoes. A photographer’s flash-bulb went off by Gibson’s aircraft; Cochrane was there too, standing clear of the slipstream. Fay stood by “P Popsie,” waggling her fingers encouragingly at the crew.

“G for George” waddled forward with the shapeless bulk under its belly, taxied to the south fence, swung its long snout to the north and waited, engines turning quietly. “P Popsie” turned slowly in on the left, and “M Mother” on the right. Gibson rattled out the monotonous orders of his final check.

“Flaps thirty.”

Pulford, the engineer, pumped down 30 degrees of flap and repeated, “Flaps thirty.”

“Radiators open.”

“Radiators open.”

“Throttles locked.”

Pulford checked the nut on the throttle unit.

“Throttles locked.”

“Prepare to take off,” Gibson said and checked through to all the crew on the intercom. “O.K., rear gunner?” “O.K.” And then all the others. He leaned forward with his thumb up, looking to left and then to right, and Martin and Hopgood raised their thumbs back. Pulford closed his hand over the four throttles and pushed till the engines deepened their note and the aircraft was throbbing… straining; then Gibson flicked his brakes off, there was the hiss of compressed air and they were rolling, all three of them, engineers sliding the throttles right forward.

The blare of twelve engines slammed over the field and echoed in the hangar, the tails slowly came up as they picked up speed in a loose vie, ungainly with nearly 5 tons of bomb and over 5 tons of petrol each. Gibson held her down for a long time and the a.s.i. was flicking on no m.p.h. before he tightened back on the wheel and let her come unstuck after a long, slow bounce. At 200 feet they turned slowly on course with the sun low behind.

McCarthy eased “T for Tom” off the runway twenty minutes late and set course on his own. At 9.47 Dinghy Young led Astell and Maltby off. Eight minutes after that Maudslay, Shannon and Knight were in the air. Anne waved them off. The final five, the reserve aircraft, did not take off till two hours later. By the time they arrived in the target area Gibson, if still alive, would know where to send them.

CHAPTER VII ATTACK

GIBSON slid over the Wash at a hundred feet. The cockpit was hot and he was flying in his shirtsleeves with Mae West over the top; after a while he yelled, “Hey, Hutch, turn the heat off.”

“Thank God for that,” the wireless operator said, screwing the valve shut. The heat in a Lancaster runs down the fuselage but comes out round the wireless operators’ seat, so he is always too hot, while the rear gunner is always too cold.

The sun astern on the quarter threw long shadows on fields peaceful and fresh with spring crops ; dead ahead the moon was swimming out of the ground haze like a bullseye. Gibson flew automatically, eyes flicking from the horizon to the a.s.i., to the repeater compass in its rubber suspension.

The haze of Norfolk passed a few miles to port. In the nose, Spafford said, “There’s the sea,” and a minute later they were low over Southwold, the shingle was beneath them, and then they were over the water, flat and grey in the evening light. England faded behind. “G George” dropped down to 50 feet, and on each side Martin and Hopgood came down too, putting off the evil moment when German radar would pick them up. You couldn’t put it off indefinitely; about twenty miles from the Dutch coast the blips would be flicking on the radar screens and the orders would be going out to the flak batteries and fighter fields.

Martin ranged up alongside and there was a light winking as he flashed his Aldis lamp at them.

“What’s he saying, Hutch?” Gibson asked.

“We’re going to get screechers tomorrow night.” Hutchinson picked up his own Aldis and winked back, “You’re darned right. Biggest binge of all time.” Hutchinson didn’t drink. Terry Taerum, Gibson’s navigator, spoke: “Our ground speed is exactly 2031/2 miles an hour. We will be there in exactly one hour, ten minutes and thirty seconds. We ought to cross the coast dead on track. Incidentally, you’re one degree off course.” The last part was the standing joke. The pilot who can fly without sometimes yawing a degree or so off course has yet to be born.

In the ops. room of 5 Group H.Q. at Grantham, Cochrane was walking Barnes Wallis up and down, trying to comfort him. Wallis was fidgety and jittery, and Cochrane was talking of anything but the bomb, trying to get Wallis’s mind off it, but Wallis could think of nothing else.

“Just think what a wonderful job you made of the Wellington,” Cochrane said encouragingly. “It’s a magnificent machine; been our mainstay for over three years.”

“Oh dear, no,” lamented the disconcerting scientist. “Do you know, every time I pass one I wonder how I could ever have designed anything so crude.”

A black Bentley rushed up the gravelled drive outside, pulled up by the door and the sentries snapped rigidly to attention as Harris himself jumped briskly out. He came into the ops. room. “How’s it going, Cocky?”

“All right so far, sir,” Cochrane said. “Nothing to report yet.” They walked up and down the long room between the wall where the aircraft blackboards were and the long desks that ran down the other side, where men were sitting. Satterly was there, “The Gremlin,” the intelligence man and Dunn, chief signals officer, sitting by a telephone plugged in to the radio in the signals cabin outside. He would get all the Morse from the aircraft there; it was too far for low-flying planes to get through by ordinary speech.

Harris and Cochrane talked quietly, and Wallis was walking miserably with them but not talking, breaking away every now and then to look at the big operations map on the end wall. The track lunes had been pencilled in and he was counting off the miles they should be travelling. It was 10.35 when Cochrane looked at his watch and said, “They ought to be coming up to the Dutch coast now.”

The sun had gone and the moon was inching higher into the dusk, lighting a road ahead across the water; outside the dancing road the water was hardly visible, a dark mass with a couple of little flecks.

Taerum said, “Five minutes to the Dutch coast,” and the crew snapped out of the wordless lull of the past half hour. “Good,” Gibson said. Martin and Hopgood eased their aircraft forward till the black snouts nosed alongside Gibson and veered out to make a wider target, their engines snarling thinly in gusts above the monotonous roar in “G George.” Flying so low, just off the water, they seemed to be sliding very fast along the moonpath towards the waiting flak.

Spafford said, “There’s the coast.” It was a black line lying dim and low on the water, and then from a couple of miles out on the port side a chain of glowing little balls was climbing into the sky. “Flak ship,” said Martin laconically. The shells were way off and he ignored them. The sparkling moon-path ended abruptly, they tore across the white line of surf and were over enemy territory. “New course 105 magnetic,” Taerum called, and the three aircraft swung gently to the left as they started the game of threading their way through the flak.

The northern wave made landfall about the same time, sighting Vlieland and turning south-east to cut across the narrow part and down over the Zuyder Zee. Munro led them across the dark spit; it was so narrow they would see the water again in about thirty seconds and have another seventy miles of comparatively safe water, but without warning there were flashes below and up came the fiery little balls. Munro felt the shock as they hit the aircraft, and then they were past and over the water again. Munro called on the intercom, to see if the crew were all right, but the earphones were dead.

Pigeon, the wireless op., was standing by his shoulder shouting into his ear, “No radio. No intercom. Flak’s smashed it. I think everyone’s O.K.” Munro flew on several miles, trying to fool himself they could still carry on, but it was no good and he knew it. Without radio he could not direct the attack on the Sorpe; could not even direct his own crew or get bombing instructions. Swearing, he turned for home.

Inside the Zuyder the water was dark and quite flat, treacherously deceptive for judging height. Geoff Rice slipped down a little to level at 60 feet by his belly lights, but the lights were not working properly and lured him lower as he tried to get a fix. A hammer seemed to hit the aircraft like a bolt and there was a tearing roar above the engines. Rice dragged her off the water, but the belly was torn out of her and the bomb had gone with it. The gutted fuselage had scooped up a couple of tons of water; it was pouring out of her and the rear gunner was nearly drowning in his turret. Marvellously she still flew but was dropping back, and when they found the bomb was gone Rice turned her heavily back towards England.

The remaining two, Barlow and Byers, skirted their pinpoint on the cape at Stavoren and ten minutes later crossed to the enemy land again at Harderwijk. No one knows exactly how soon it was that the flak came curling up at them again, but there is a report that as Barlow’s aircraft hit the ground the bomb went off with a blinding flash, lighting the countryside like a rising sun for ten seconds before it died and left nothing. It was either then or soon after that Byers and his crew died too. Nothing more was heard from him. Only McCarthy was left of the Sorpe team, flying sixty miles behind, and perhaps that is what saved him.

Over Holland, Gibson, Martin and Hopgood were down as low as 40 feet, playing hide-and-seek with the ground, the bomb aimers calling terse warnings as houses and trees loomed up, and the aircraft skimmed over them. They were cruising fast and under the cowlings the exhaust manifolds were glowing. Once the three pulled up fast as the pylons of a power line rushed at them, and they just cleared the wires.

Four miles to port they saw the flare-path of Gilze-Rijen, German night-fighter field, and a few miles farther on they passed just to the left of the night-fighter aerodrome at Eindhoven. They could expect night fighters now; the ops. rooms for miles around must be buzzing. Martin and Hopgood closed in on each side of Gibson for mutual protection. They should be able to see any fighter coming in because he would be higher, while they, low against the dark ground, would be hard to see, and that was their strength. Also their weakness where the flak was concerned. Their aircraft were higher, outlined. Just past Eindhoven, Gibson led them in a gentle turn to the north-east on the new course that would take them round the bristling guns of the Ruhr.

A few miles back the other two vies of three were on course too. Dinghy Young pin-pointed over the canal at Rosendaal and turned delicately to take them between the fighter fields, but Bill Astell did not seem sure this was the exact turning point. He bore off a little to the south for a minute and then turned back, but had fallen half a mile behind and was a fraction off track. They did not see him again, and it must have been quite soon after that the flak or fighter, whatever it was, got him.

Fourteen left.

The leading three slid across the border into Germany and saw no light or movements anywhere, only darkness filled with the beat of engines. Taerum thought they were south of track, so they edged to the north, a little nervily because this was the treacherous leg; they were coming up to the Rhine to sneak between the forewarned guns of Huls and the Ruhr. Just short of the river some twelve light flak guns opened up without warning; the aircraft gunners squirted back at the roots of the tracer and then they were out of range. No one badly hit. The Rhine was rushing at them and up from a barge spat a thin line of tracer, but they were past before the bullets found them.

Two minutes later more guns opened up, and this time three searchlights lit on Gibson. Foxlee and Deering were shooting at the searchlights. One of them popped out but the two others held, and the air was full of tracer. The rear gunners came into action, the searchlights switched to Martin, blinding him, and Gibson could read the big P on the side of the Lancaster. Every gun was firing, the aircraft juddering with the recoil, and then they were through with throttles wide.

Ahead and just to the left another searchlight sprang to life and caught Gibson. Foxlee was firing instantly, holding his triggers in a long burst, his tracer whipping into the light. It flicked out, and as they went over in the dying glow they saw the gunners scattering. Tammy Simpson opened up from the rear turret till they were out of range. You can’t take prisoners in an aircraft.

They were past and shook themselves back into formation. Hutchinson tapped out a flak warning, giving the exact position, and way back in Grantham, Dunn picked it up and the powerful group radio re-broadcast it at full strength to all other aircraft.

Gibson swung them north around Hamm, whose marshalling yards will for years be notorious. Taerum said, “New course, skipper, 165 magnetic,” and then they were hugging the ground on the last leg, slicing between Soest and Werl. Now the moon was high enough to light the ground and ahead loomed the dark hills that cradled the water. They climbed to the ridge that rimmed the horizon, crossed into the valley, and down below lay the flat sheet of Moehne Lake.

It was like looking down on the model: the same saucer of water, the same dim fields and across the neck of the lake the squat rampart hugging the water, crowned by the towers. In the half-light it looked like a battleship, but more impregnable. Reinforced concrete a hundred feet thick.

The dam came suddenly to life, prickling with sharp flashes, and the lines of angry red meteors were streaming into the sky and moving about blindly as the gunners hosed the area.

“Bit aggressive, aren’t they?” said Trevor-Roper. The pilots swung the aircraft away and headed in wide circles round the lake, keeping out of range and waiting for the others. There seemed to be about ten guns, some in the fields on each side of the lake near the dam, and some—a lot—in the towers in the dam.

Gibson started calling the other aircraft, and one by one they reported, except Astell. He called Astell again at the end, but Astell had been dead for an hour. After a while Gibson gave up and said soberly over the intercom., “Well, boys, I suppose we’d better start the ball rolling.” It was the end of the waiting and the start of action, when thought is submerged. He flicked his transmitter switch:

“Hello all Cooler aircraft, I am going in to attack. Stand by to come in in your order when I tell you. Hello * M Mother.’ Stand by to take over if anything happens.”

“O.K. Leader. Good luck.” Hopgood’s voice was a careful monotone.

Gibson turned wide, hugging the hills at the eastern end of the lake. Pulford had eased the throttles on and she was roaring harshly, picking up speed and quivering, the nose slowly coming round till three miles ahead they saw the towers and the rampart of the dam, and in between, the flat dark water. Spafford said, “Good show. This is wizard. I can see everything.” They came out of the hills and slammed across the water, touching 240 now, and Gibson rattled off the last orders :

“Check height, Terry! Speed control, Pulford! Gunners ready! Coming up, Spam!” Taerum flicked the belly lights on and, peering down from the blister, started droning: “Down… down… down… up a bit… steady, stead-y-y.” The lights were touching each other, “G George” was exactly at 60 feet and the flak gunners had seen the lights. The streams of glowing shells were swivelling and lowering, and then the shells were whipping towards them, seeming to move slowly at first like all flak, and then rushing madly at their eyes as the aircraft plunged into them.

Gibson held her steady, pointing between the towers. Taerum was watching out of the blister, Pulford had a hand on the throttles and his eyes on the a.s.i., Spafford held the plywood sight to his eye and the towers were closing in on the nails. Gibson shouted to Pulford, “Stand by to pull me out of the seat if I get hit ! “There was a sudden snarling clatter up in the nose; Deering had opened up, his tracer spitting at the towers.

The dam was a rushing giant, darkness split with flashes, the cockpit stank of cordite and thought was nothing but a cold alarm shouting, “In another minute we shall be dead,” and then Spafford screamed, “Bomb gone!” loud and sharp. Seconds later they rocketed over the dam between the towers. A red Very light soared up as Hutchinson pulled the trigger to let the others know, and then the deeper snarling chatter as Trevor-Roper opened up on the towers from the rear.