The Dam Busters (8 page)

It was over and memory was confusion as they cork-screwed down the valley, hugging the dark earth sightless to the flak. They were out of range and Gibson lifted her out of the hills, turning steeply, and looked back. A voice in his earphones said, “Good show, Leader, Nice work.”

The black water between the towers suddenly rose and split and a huge white core erupted through the middle and climbed towards the sky. The lake was writhing, and as the white column reached its peak and hung a thousand feet high, like a ghost against the moon, the heavy explosion reached the aircraft. They looked in awe as they flew back to one side and saw sheets of water spilling over the dam and thought for a wild moment it had burst. The fury of the water passed and the dam was still there, the white column slowly dying.

Round the lake they flew while Hutchinson tapped out in code to base. In a few minutes Gibson thought the lake was calm enough for the next bomb and called:

“Hello ‘M Mother.’ You may attack now. Good luck.”

“O.K. Leader. Attacking.” Hopgood was still carefully laconic. He was lost in the darkness over the hills at the end of the lake while the others waited. They saw his bellylights flick on and the two little yellow pools sliding over the water closing and joining as he found his height. He was straight and level on his run; the flak saw him and the venomous fireflies were darting at him. He plunged on; the gap was closing fast when the shells found him and someone said, “He’s been hit!”

A red glow was blossoming round the inner port wing tank, and then a long, long ribbon of flame trailed behind “M Mother.” The bomb aimer must have been hit, because the bomb overshot the parapet on to the power house below.

“M Mother “was past the dam, nose up, straining for height so the crew could bale out, when the tanks blew up with an orange flare, a wing ripped away and the bomber spun to the ground in burning, bouncing pieces. The bomb went off near the power house like a brilliant sun. It was all over in seconds.

A voice said over the R/T, “Poor old Hoppy.”

Gibson called up : “Hello ‘ P Popsie.’ Are you ready? “

“O.K. Leader. Going in.”

“I’ll fly across the dam as you make your run and try and draw the flak off you.”

“O.K. Thanks, Leader.”

Martin was turning in from the hills and Gibson headed across the lake, parallel to the dam and just out of effective range of the guns. As Martin’s spotlights merged and sped across the water Gibson back-tracked and Deering and Trevor-Roper opened up; six lines of tracer converged on the towers, drawing their attention, so that for some seconds most of the guns did not notice Martin rocketing over the water. He held his height and Whittaker had the speed right. They were tracking; straight for the middle of the dam between the moon-bathed towers when the gunners spotted them and threw a curtain of fire between the towers, spreading like a fan so they would have to fly through it. Martin drove straight ahead.

Two guns swung at them, and as the shells whipped across the water sharp-eyed little Foxlee was yelling as he squirted back, his tracer lacing and tangling with the flak.

A sharp “Bomb gone!” from Bob Hay, and in the same instant a shudder as two shells smacked into the starboard wing, one of them exploding in the inner petrol tank. A split second of flashes as they shot through the barrage. Tammy Simpson opened up from the rear turret, Chambers shot the Very light and they were down the valley. Whittaker was looking fearfully at the hole in the starboard wing, but no fire was coming. He suddenly realised why and nudged Martin, yelling in his ear, “The starboard tank was empty ! “

Martin shouted, “Bomb gone, Leader.”

“O.K. ‘P Popsie.’ Let me know when you’re out of the flak. Hello ‘A Apple.’ Are you ready?”

“O.K. Leader.”

“Right. Go ahead. Let me know when you’re in position and I’ll draw the flak for you.”

Martin called again “‘P Popsie’ clear now, Leader.”

“O.K. Are you hit?”

“Yeah. Starboard wing, but we’re all right. We can make it.”

The lake suddenly boiled again by the dam and spewed out the great white column that climbed again to a thousand feet. More water was cascading over the dam, but it cleared soon and the dam was still there.

Dinghy Young was on the air again. “‘A Apple’ making bombing run.”

Gibson headed back over the lake where his gunners could play with fire, and this time Martin did the same. As Young came plunging across the lake Gibson and Martin came in on each side, higher up, and the flak did not know where to shoot. Young swept past the dam and reported he was all right. The great explosion was up against the dam wall again, beautifully accurate, but the dam was still there, and again Gibson waited till the plume of spray had cleared and the water was calm.

He called Maltby and ordered him in, and as Maltby came across the water Gibson and Martin came in with him., firing with every gun that could bear and flicking the navigation lights on this time to help the flak gunners shoot at the wrong target. The red cartridge soared up from Maltby’s aircraft to signal “Attack successful.”

In a few moments the mountain of water erupted skyward again under the dam wall. It was uncanny how accurate the bomb was. The spray from the explosions was misting up the whole valley now and it was hard to see what was happening by the dam, Gibson called Shannon to make his attack, and the words were barely out of his mouth when a sharp voice filled his earphones :

“It’s gone! It’s gone! Look at it!” Wheeling round the valley side Martin had seen the concrete face abruptly split and crumble under the weight of water. Gibson swung in close and was staggered. A ragged hole 100 yards across and 100 feet deep split the dam and the lake was pouring out of it, 134 million tons of water crashing into the valley in a jet 200 feet long, smooth on top, foaming at the sides where it tore at the rough edges of the breach and boiling over the scarred earth where the power house had been.

Gibson told Shannon to “skip it.”

The others flew over and were awed into silence. In the moonglow they watched a wall of water rolling down the valley, 25 feet high, moving 20 feet a second. A gunner still on his feet in one of the towers opened up at them until lines of tracer converged on the root of the flak and it stopped abruptly. The awed silence was broken by a babble of intercom, chatter as they went mad with excitement; the only man not looking being Hutchinson, sitting at his keyboard tapping out “Nigger.”

Soon the hissing steam and spray blurred the valley. Gibson called Martin and Maltby to set course for home, and told Young, Shannon, Maudslay and Knight to follow him east to the Eder. Young was to control if Gibson was shot down.

CHAPTER VIII THE WRITHING LAKE

AT Grantham a long silence had followed the flak warning at Huls, and then Dunn’s phone rang sharply, and in the dead silence they all heard the Morse crackling in the receiver. It was quite slow and Cochrane, bending near, could read it. “Goner,” he said. “From G George.” “Goner” was the code word that meant Gibson had exploded his bomb in the right place.

“I’d hoped one bomb might do it,” Wallis said gloomily.

“It’s probably weakened it,” Cochrane soothed him. Harris looked non-committal. There was no more from “G George,” and they went on walking. A long silence. Nothing came through when Hopgood crashed. The phone rang, “Goner” from “P Popsie.” Another dragging silence. “Goner” from “A Apple.” Wallis swears even today that there was half an hour between each signal, but the Jog shows only about five minutes. “Goner” from “J Johnny.” That was Maltby, and the aura of gloom settled deeper over Wallis.

A minute later the phone rang again and the Morse crackled so fast the others could not read it. Dunn printed it letter by letter on a signals pad and let out a cry, “Nigger. It’s Nigger. It’s gone.”

Wallis threw his arms over his head and went dancing round the room. The austere face of Cochrane cracked into a grin, he grabbed one of Wallis’s hands and started congratulating him. Harris, with the first grin on his face that Wallis had ever seen, grabbed the other hand and said :

“Wallis, I didn’t believe a word you said about this bomb, but you could sell me a pink elephant now.”

He said, a little later when some of the excitement had died down : “I must tell Portal immediately.” Sir Charles Portal, Chief of the R.A.F., was in Washington that night on a mission, actually at that moment dining with Roosevelt. Harris picked up the nearest phone and said, “Get me the White House.”

The little W.A.A.F. on the switchboard knew nothing of the highly secret raid. Even at Grantham, Cochrane’s security had been perfect. She did not realise the importance of it all, or the identity of the great man who was speaking, and was caught off guard. “Yes, sir,” she said automatically and, so they say, dialled the only White House she knew, a jolly little roadhouse a few miles out of Grantham.

Harris must have thought she was a very smart operator when the White House answered so quickly, and there are reported to have been moments of incredible and indescribable comedy as Harris asked for Portal, and the drowsy landlord, testy at being hauled out of bed after midnight, told him in well-chosen words he didn’t have anyone called Portal staying at the place; in fact, he didn’t have anyone staying at all, because he didn’t have room, and if he did have room he would not have anyone staying there who had people who called him up at that time of night. Not for long anyway.

Harris went red, and there were some explosive exchanges before one of them slammed the receiver down. Someone slipped down and had a word with the little W.A.A.F., and she tried in terror for the next hour to raise Washington, but without success.

Three kilometres down the valley from the Moehne lay the sleeping village of Himmelpforten, which means Gate of Heaven. The explosions had wakened the village priest, Father Berkenkopf, and he guessed instantly what was happening; he had been afraid of it for three years. He ran to his small stone church, Porta Coeli (which also means Gate of Heaven—in Latin) and begun tugging grimly on the bell-rope, the signal he had arranged with his villagers. It is not certain how many were warned in time. In the darkness the clanging of the bell rolled ominously round the valley and then it was muffled in the thunder moving nearer. Berkenkopf must have heard it and known what it meant, but it seems that he was still pulling at the bell when the flood crushed the church and the village of the Gate of Heaven and rolled them down the valley.

It went for many miles and took more villages, a tumbling maelstrom of water and splintered houses, beds and frying-pans, the chalice from Porta Coeli and the bell, the bodies of cattle and horses, pigs and dogs, and the bodies of Father Berkenkopf and other human beings.

War, as someone said, is a great leveller, but he did not mean it quite as literally or as bitterly as this.

The Eder was hard to find because fog was filling the valley. Gibson circled it for some time before he was certain he was there. One by one the others found it and soon they were all in a left-hand circuit round the lake. There was no flak; probably the Germans thought the Eder did not need it. It lay deep in a fold of the hills; the ridges around were a thousand feet high and it was no place to dive a heavy aircraft at night.

Gibson said, “O.K. Dave. Start your attack.”

Shannon flew a wide circuit over the ridges and then put his nose right down, but the dive was not steep enough and he overshot. Sergeant Henderson slammed on full throttle, and Shannon hauled back on the stick and they just cleared the mountain on the far side.

“Sorry Leader,” Shannon said a little breathlessly. “Made a mess of that. I’ll try it again.”

Five times more he dived into the dark valley but he failed every time to get into position and nearly stood the Lancaster on her tail to get out of the hills again. He called up finally, “I think I’d better circle and try to get to know this place.”

“O.K. Dave. You hang around a bit and let someone else have a crack. Hullo ‘ Z Zebra.’ You have a go now.”

Maudslay acknowledged and a minute later was diving down the contour of the hills, only to overshoot and go rocketing up again like Shannon. He tried again but the same thing happened. Maudslay said he was going to try once more. He came slowly over the ridges, turned in the last moment and the nose dropped sharply into the gloom as he forced her down into the valley. They saw him level out very fast, and then the spotlights flicked on to the water and closed quickly and he was tracking for the dam. His red Very light curled up as Fuller called “Bombs gone!”

But something went wrong. The bomb hit the parapet of the dam at high speed and blew up on impact with a tremendous flash; in the glare they saw “Z Zebra” for a moment just above the explosion. Then only blackness.

Gibson said painfully, knowing it was useless : “Henry, Henry—hullo ‘Z Zebra,’ are you all right?” There was no answer. He called again and, incredibly, out of the darkness a very faint voice said, “I think so… stand by,” They all heard it, Gibson and Shannon and Knight, and wondered that it was possible. After a while Gibson called again but there was no answer. Maudslay never came back. Gibson called, “O.K., David, will you attack now?” Shannon tried and missed again; came round once more, plunged into the darkness and this time made it, curling out of the dive at the foot of the lake and tracking for the dam. He found his height quickly, the bomb dropped clear and Shannon roughly pulled his plane up over the shoulder of the mountain. Under the parapet the bomb spewed up the familiar plume of white water and as it drifted down Gibson, diving over the lake, saw that the dam was still there. There was only Knight left. He had the last bomb. Gibson ordered him in.

Knight tried once and couldn’t make it. He tried again. Failed. “Come in down moon and dive for the point, Les,” Shannon said. He gave more advice over the R/T, and Knight listened quietly. He was a young Australian who did not drink, his idea of a riotous evening being to write letters home and go to the pictures. He dived to try again, made a perfect run and they saw the splashes as his bomb skipped over the water in feathers of spray. Seconds later the water erupted, and as Gibson slanted down to have a look he saw the wall of the dam burst open and the torrent come crashing out.

This was even more fantastic than the Moehne. The breach in the dam was as big and there were over 200 million tons of water pouring through. The Eder Valley was steeper and they watched speechlessly as the flood foamed and tossed down the valley, lengthening like a snake. It must have been rolling at 30 feet a second. They saw a car in front racing to get clear; only the lights they saw, like two frightened eyes spearing the dark, and the car was not fast enough. The foam crawled up on it, the headlights turned opalescent green as the water rolled over, and suddenly they flicked out.

Hutchison was tapping “Dinghy” in Morse; that was the code to say that the Eder was destroyed. When he had finished Gibson called, “O.K. all Cooler aircraft. You’ve had your look. Let’s go home.” and the sound of their engines died over the hills as they flew west to fight their way back.

McCarthy had fought a lone way through to the Sorpe, tucked down in rolling hills south of the Moehne. The valleys were full of mist, so it was a long time before he pin-pointed himself over the lake, dimly seeing through the haze a shape he recognised from the model.

He tried a dummy run and found, as the others found before at the Eder, that there was a hill at each end so that he would have to dive steeply, find his aiming point quickly and pull up in a hurry. He tried twice more but was not satisfied and came in a third time, plunging through the mist trying to see through the suffused moonlight. He nearly hit the water and levelled out very low. Johnson picked up the aiming point and seconds later yelled, “Bomb gone! “and they were climbing up over the far hills when the bomb exploded by the dam wall. McCarthy dived back over the dam and they saw that the crest had crumbled for 50 yards. As they turned on course for England, Eaton tapped out the code word that told of their successful drop.

Wallis’s joy was complete. Cochrane radioed “G George.’* asking if he had any aircraft left to divert to the Sorpe, and Hutchinson answered, “None.” Satterly, who had been plotting the path of the reserve force by dead reckoning, radioed orders to them.

Burpee, in “S Sugar,” was directed to the Sorpe, but he did not answer. They called again and again, but there was only silence. He was dead.

Brown, in “F Freddy,” was sent to the Sorpe and reached it after McCarthy had left; the mist was swirling thicker and, though he dived low over the dam, Oancia, the bomb aimer, could not pick it up in time,,

Brown dived back on a second run but Oancia still found the mist foiled him. They tried eight times, and then Brown pulled up and they had a conference over the intercom. On the next run Oancia dropped a cluster of incendiaries in the woods to the side of the dam. They burned dazzlingly and the trees caught too, so that on the tenth run Oancia picked up the glare a long way back, knew exactly where the target was and dropped his load accurately.

They pulled round in a climbing turn and a jet of water and rubble climbed out of the mist and hung against the moon; down in the mist itself they saw a shock wave of air like a giant smoke ring circling the base of the spout.

Anderson, in “Y Yorker,” was also sent to the Sorpe, but he was still later than Brown, and now the valley was completely under mist so that the lake and the dam were hidden and he had to turn back with his bomb.

Ottley, in “C Charlie,” was ordered to the Lister Dam, one of the secondary targets. He acknowledged “Message received,” but that was the last anyone ever heard from him.

The last man was Townsend, in “O Orange,” and his target was the Ennerpe. He searched a long time before he found it in the mist, and made three runs before he was satisfied and dropped the bomb. It was accurate.

Ten out of the nineteen were coming home, hugging the ground, 8 tons lighter now in bomb and petrol load and travelling at maximum cruising, about 245, not worrying about petrol; only about getting home. The coast was an hour away and the sun less than that. They knew the fighters were overhead waiting for a lightening sky in the east.

Gibson saw the dark blotch of Hamm ahead and swung to the east. To the left he saw another aircraft; it was going too near Hamm, he thought, whoever it was, and then the flak came up and something was burning in the sky where the aircraft had been. It was falling, hit like a shooting star and blew up. It may have been Burpee. Or Ottley.

Townsend was the last away from the dams area. He flew back over the Moehne and could not recognise it at first; the lake had changed shape. Already there were mudbanks with little boats stranded on them, and bridges stood long-legged out of the shrinking water. The torpedo net had vanished, and below the dam the country was different. There was a new lake where no lake had been; a strange lake, writhing down the valley.

Miraculously most of them dodged the flak on the way back; lucky this, because dawn was coming, the sky was paler in the east and at 50 feet the aircraft were sitting ducks. In Gibson’s aircraft Trevor-Roper called on the intercom., “Unidentified enemy aircraft behind.”

“O.K., Trev.” “G George” sank till it was scraping the fields and they could see the startled cattle running in panic. Trevor-Roper said, “O.K., we’ve lost him,” but Gibson still kept down on the deck.

Over Holland he called Dinghy Young, but there was no answer and he wondered what had happened to him. (Group knew ! They had got a brief message from Young. He had come over the coast a little high and the last squirts of flak had hit him. He had struggled on a few more miles, losing height, and then ditched in the water.)

Coming to the West Wall, Gibson climbed to about 300 feet, Pulford slid the throttles right forward and they dived to the ground again, picking up speed, and at 270 m.p.h. they roared over the tank traps and the naked sand and then they were over the grey morning water and beyond the flak.

Ten minutes later it was daylight over Holland, and Towns-end was still picking his way out. He was lucky and went between the guns.

Maltby was first back, landing in the dawn and finding the whole station had been waiting up since dusk. Harris, Cochrane and Wallis met him at the hardstanding and he told them what he had seen. Martin landed. Mutt Summers went out to meet him and found Martin under the aircraft looking at a ragged hole in his wing.

One by one they landed and were driven to the ops. room, where Harris, Cochrane and Wallis listened intently. Gibson came in, his hair pressed flat from eight hours under his helmet. “It was a wizard party, sir,” he said. “Went like a bomb, but we couldn’t quieten some of the flak. I’m afraid some of the boys got the hammer. Don’t know how many yet. Hopgood and Maudslay for certain.”