A SORTIE AGAINST A CITY
“There’s a war on tonight.” The call from air force group headquarters to the squadron usually came in the early morning. An operational board was updated with the list of crews scheduled to fly that night, but no target was announced. “Prior to briefing,” however, “we’d try and find out how much petrol was being loaded on the aircraft, and by that we could tell how far the trip was going to be,” remarked Flight Lieutenant W.E. Vaughan.1 Rumours were rife, and some cheeky men even placed wagers on the target. Other flyers, more philosophical, wondered if this sortie, whether it was a hop across the Channel or a drive deep into Germany, might be their last. New men were particularly likely to be nervous, but so too were those who were inching their way towards the end of their thirty-operation tour. When the tour ended, they would be given a rest as a trainer in Britain or Canada, before being required to return six months later for a second tour. Flying Officer Murray Peden described the cumulative strain after nearly two dozen operations: “Each time I found myself on the battle order, the ordeal of waiting—an ordeal punctuated by the ritual of air test, briefing, and flying meal—seemed intensified, the muscles of the abdomen hardening until they felt like the extended ribs of a miniature umbrella.”2
The aircrews moved into the briefing room—usually in the early afternoon if it was a night operation, which was almost always the case—and sat together as a crew. Over a hundred men might be packed into the space. RCAF Flight Sergeant B.G. McDonald observed that the green crews were seated in the front rows, while the more experienced hands grabbed the seats behind them. But, “as casualties occurred, [the new crews] moved back, row by row. It wasn’t unusual for a new crew to be in the front row one night, and two weeks later, to be occupying the fifth or sixth.”3
When the men were settled and the door closed, the squadron’s commanding officer called the room to attention and said some introductory words before handing the podium over to his lead briefers to describe the target and its importance. A curtain would be pulled aside to reveal a large map on which pins and coloured strings were arranged to indicate the path leading to the target. The flight into enemy air space was rarely a straight line: its turns were intended to deceive the German defenders about the squadron’s true destination. The revelation of the target brought murmurs, sighs, and even catcalls. Objectives in France required less time in the air and were generally safer. Cities in the Ruhr Valley, one of the major German industrial centres and known satirically to most airmen as “Happy Valley,” were obscured by smog and protected by thousands of anti-aircraft guns and searchlights, and were always more costly in terms of crews lost. The most fearful target was Berlin—the “Big City”—as it was far inside enemy territory and surrounded by legions of guns, fighters, and searchlights.
Briefing of the aircrews of Nos. 431 and 434 Squadrons, RCAF, before an operation against Nazi-occupied Europe.
The navigators and bomb aimers took special note of the bomber stream’s approach, highlighting the turns in mid-air to avoid German cities protected by flak, as well as known enemy air defences, especially the expected patrol grids occupied by night fighters. It was also crucial to remember the colour of the flares that would be used to illuminate ground targets, because the defenders set all manner of decoys. The intelligence officer (“Spy” in flyer slang) detailed what was known about the city’s defences. “If ‘Spy’ was foolish enough to predict light enemy flak over an area we considered to be hot,” recounted one indignant Canadian flyer, “someone invariably would pipe up with, ‘Yeah, that’s what you told us the night we lost thirty aircraft.’”4 The flyers did not want to be sold a bill of goods—their lives were on the line.
The weather briefing was given by “Cloudy Joe,” as the meteorological officer was called, although he also went by a number of unprintable nicknames. Types of clouds and when they were expected to break, potential icing situations, and wind speed were all provided, although experienced airmen were skeptical about the quality of the “gen” (information) for a target that was five to seven hours away. The cloud cover was rated out of ten; full cover, “10/10,” meant that a target was entirely concealed and almost always led to the scrubbing of the operation. The denser the cloud cover, the less likely the bombers would hit specific targets on the ground. However, aircrews generally wished for some cloud cover to facilitate their escape after they dropped their payload. A full moon made the German countryside visible to the bombers but also made their planes easy targets for the night fighters and the ground defences. Despite the increased vulnerability it brought with it, a “bomber’s moon” was not a sufficient obstacle to force the cancellation of a mission. Flight Lieutenant Douglas Baird of No. 408 Squadron, RCAF, remembered that his anxiety rose as the briefing progressed until he found himself, by the end of it, “shaking like a leaf.”5 Flight Lieutenant John Zinkhan recollected that his mind often drifted during the briefing and “without exception, I was on edge, wondering if it would be our turn next to go ‘for the chop.’”6 Many others weighed the same odds.
WHEN THE BRIEFING WAS OVER, the aircrews had several hours to kill. Most talked over the operation or mused about the quality of the gen. “Every aircrew hated and feared the endless hours between briefing and actually taking off,” recounted Douglas Harvey, a No. 408 Squadron pilot.7 Flight Lieutenant Ross Baroni witnessed the growing strain as thoughts turned to the long night ahead, noting, “we kept pushing it behind … trying to put it aside. You had a job to do. To stay true.”8 Flyers tried to catch a few hours of sleep, but nerves were frayed and rest was elusive.
A Halifax at rest and soon to be “bombed up.” A four-engine heavy bomber needed about 8,000 litres of aviation gasoline and carried about five and a half tons of bombs.
All phone lines were cut at the base after the briefing, leaving airmen no opportunity to reveal the target by accident, or to say goodbye. RCAF Warrant Officer Al Bridgwater recalled, “After briefing, most chaps would write letters,” and these were normally left with a chum.9 Putting pen to paper for mothers, fathers, and children was no easy task for these anxious men. Some of their brave veneer crumbled as flyers sought the phrases and sentiments that would convey comfort should they fall.
Later in the day, most of the aircrews were driven out to check their “birds,” which had been readied by the dedicated ground crews who were “bombing up” the machines. Filling the Lancasters with a full load of about 8,000 litres of aviation gasoline took the better part of half a day. The bombs were transported on trolleys to the hard standings from the protected bomb dumps. Like most airmen, Flight Lieutenant Leslie McCaig had a close relationship with the ground crew. “These poor devils work hard and I have the utmost respect for them,” he wrote in his diary. “Those assigned to a kite treat it like a baby if they like the crew—they work all hours and never get any credit for it. We know how valuable they are but unfortunately the public does not.”10
Crews that survived a few operations on a specific bomber routinely stayed with the same plane. Bombers were tracked alphabetically, A-Able, S-Sugar, or V-Victor. Each machine was also commonly distinguished by its nose art, a more informal name, and marks indicating the tally of successful sorties. The nose art was an emblem of service and survival: the aircrews who “owned” the bombers after completing a number of operations chose the design. The metal canvas invited all manner of representations, but the young bomber crews (like their naval counterparts) were attracted mostly to cartoon characters or women in risqué poses. A number of Canadian symbols were also used, such as the Maple Leaf, or icons connecting the flyers to their hometowns. The nose art was a part of bomber culture, and as Jack McIntosh of No. 419 Squadron, RCAF, claimed, “The name and nose art made it feel she was ‘our’ aircraft and would always bring us home.”11
IN THEIR TOPSY-TURVY WORLD, the bomber crews slept by day and flew by night; consequently, they were given a solid breakfast at dinner time, usually real eggs and bacon. This was a luxury in wartime Britain, but appropriate for a “last meal,” as Flight Lieutenant Ross Baroni of No. 434 Squadron, RCAF, called it.12 It was reserved for those crews flying on a particular night; the flyers who were not on duty suffered through the usual gamey mutton, mountain of potatoes, and waterlogged Brussels sprouts. Few of them complained too loudly, however, as their evening was free. They could go to a movie or a pub while their mates kitted up for the operation.
Crew members handed over their wallets and personal effects to the intelligence section for safekeeping. This was to ensure that personal information was kept from the enemy in case the bomber was shot down and its crew captured. They kept their identification tags so that they would be known in death and, equally important for many, given a burial according to their faith. Having stowed away their kit and created next-of-kin bags, which separated out potentially embarrassing items such as letters to girlfriends and salacious material, the crews went to pick up their flying kit.
The aircrews were issued warm flying boots, a white turtleneck sweater, and white silk gloves. A Mae West life jacket was required and worn around the waist. Escape kits were handed out and kept in the inside pocket of the battle dress tunic. These contained French, Belgian, German, and Dutch currency, as well as maps, matches, razors, food, gum, and a compass. All flyers wore a leather helmet with an oxygen mask. Earphones for the intercom system were built into the flying helmet and the speaker was in the oxygen mask, all of which went active when the flyer plugged into the bomber’s electrical system. Finally, the crews were issued with parachutes. Members of Britain’s Women’s Auxiliary Air Force or the RCAF’s Women’s Division, which had been established in the summer of 1941, handed out the parachutes with a cheerful smile, a quip, and light flirtation. Theirs was not an easy task: they handed out parachutes to young flyers, many of whom would never return. Day and night, these women packed the life-saving parachutes, making sure the silk was carefully stuffed into the tight packages, but aware that their actions were the difference between life and death for innumerable airmen. A few wags attempted well-worn jokes, along the lines of, “Shall I bring it back if it doesn’t work?” but most airmen simply inspected their bags in silence. “When our crew went to draw parachute packs,” recounted one Canadian pilot, “we would not take one that had 13 in the number. Number 27013, for example, was out on that account; and so was Number 28021, because the digits there added up to 13.”13
“Am convinced that fatigue is an indirect cause of many losses,” wrote Flight Lieutenant Leslie McCaig in his diary. “Two nights in a row are too many for any crew.”14 The relentless demands of the bomber war were hard to bear, and all of the crews that had flown for any length of time were tired and worn out. Small comforts were offered to alleviate the strain. A thermos of coffee or tea and a chocolate bar or a sandwich were available from the kitchen. These could be taken on the mission to keep hunger at bay and supply energy on a long flight. Many flyers relied on barbiturates to offset the lack of sleep. “We called them ‘wakey wakey pills,’” wrote pilot Douglas Harvey.15 The medical officers prescribing the pills warned that they should not be taken until the plane was in flight, but more than a few men wolfed them down on the ground, eager for the rush to keep them alert. The medical officer’s warning was a sensible one, however, because operations were often scrubbed at the last moment because of poor weather or mechanical failure. The unfortunate airman who swallowed the pills prematurely, only to find himself grounded for the night, would be climbing the walls of his Nissen hut while his mates slept. Inevitably, some airmen became addicted to the “bennies” (Benzedrine), but Harvey never felt the need to use them. “How could anyone fall asleep over enemy territory,” he mused, “with every gun on the Continent trying to shoot you down?”16
Canadian airmen kitting up with cold-weather flying suits.
THE AIRCREWS FACED DEATH TOGETHER. Crews drew upon one another for strength and they demanded that their tight-knit group not be broken up. Having a member of the crew drop out, even for a single sortie, often meant that the senior squadron officers allowed the whole crew to sit out the mission, unless a “maximum effort” was demanded that night. Flying Officer Mike Harrington remembered when one of his crew got married, and they were ordered to fly while their mate was on his brief honeymoon. Harrington was aghast, believing that “when a crew changed, it broke up the harmony and teamwork and you might end up getting the ‘chop.’”17 He pleaded successfully for his crew to be left out of the operation. And indeed there were many examples of new men not working out. Arthur Bishop, who saw the end of thirty-five operations in 1942, observed that “few men survived a full tour.” He remembered that a new gunner, just added to their crew, broke down on his first sortie as the bomber approached the heavily defended Ruhr Valley.18 He started to scream hysterically into the intercom and kept on screaming, his voice rising and falling in naked terror, until one of the crew members eventually cut his intercom cord. The crew worried about the loss of the rearward eyes that the gunner was meant to supply, but no one went back to check on him, even as they imagined him still screaming through the roar of the engines on the long flight home.
As the sun sank on the horizon, the aircrews convened at their aircraft. “You would walk around them and kick the tires,” recounted RCAF flyer Arthur Wahlroth. “You would get inside and you would do your walk around inside to find out that all your oxygen connections and your inter-plugs were working.”19 Then the crews exited the bird and waited for a sign that the operation was either a go or cancelled due to bad weather. Clouds over the base meant a difficult landing later, but it did not necessarily mean clouds were over a target. Most men chain-smoked while they waited, since most crews had the sensible policy of forbidding smoking when in the air because of the oxygen and other flammables on board. Other men threw up.
Airmen fingered their talismans as the tension rose. Most crews, according to one Lancaster pilot, were “totally superstitious.”20 Flyers carried lucky charms, pieces of clothing like a girlfriend’s scarf, or other personal items infused with magical qualities, and almost all airmen dressed in the same set of clothes on every operation. Flight Lieutenant W.E. Vaughan spoke of his crew’s many superstitions: “We had one mid-upper gunner who chalked his wife’s name on the bomb-bay. Tom, our skipper, always wore a pair of long green socks that went right up his legs, and before take-off he always had to urinate on the left front tire.”21 Robert Kensett, a twenty-one-year-old RCAF navigator serving in No. 158 Squadron, RAF, wrote of a gift from his girlfriend—a little leprechaun made of pipe cleaners, covered in green felt and wearing a little cap: “He was my good luck charm, and I carried him everywhere with me tucked into the breast pocket of my battledress.”22 The little leprechaun was so central to Kensett’s crew’s well-being that when he forgot one time to bring it along on an operation, the rest of the crew became frantic: they found him a bike and insisted on sending him back to his room to fetch it. The superstitions bordered on the absurd. Michael Kutyn, an RCAF navigator who flew with No. 10 Squadron, RAF, professed not to be superstitious, but then observed, “Some letters of the alphabet assigned to aircraft seemed to be luckier than others. The letter ‘O’ seemed to be a lucky letter with this squadron. During the years No. 10 Squadron was in bomber command, no aircraft bearing the letter ‘O’ had been shot down over enemy territory.”23 All such magical thinking helped to ward off fear of the unknown. With so little control over their destiny, airmen hoped that items imbued with a sort of otherworldly power—which they had discovered or cultivated—would protect them.
Bomber Command aircrew with good luck charm.
THE CONTROL TOWER FIRED A FLARE to indicate that the operation was on. A last cigarette was stubbed out, and bladders were emptied in a ritual dampening of the rear tire. The mind raced in anticipation of what lay ahead. Flight Lieutenant Jack Singer wrote about his fears, acknowledging that “sometimes it took all my courage to climb back into the aircraft for start-up.”24 As the crew hauled themselves aboard, they were greeted by the smell of raw gas, oil, and hydraulic fluid. Airmen found the odour calming, as was the act of linking into the crew intercom, which drew together all seven members. They were isolated in their bird and relied implicitly on one another to survive the night. The repetitive pattern of checking equipment was, according to one Canadian navigator, “a small piece of insurance in an uninsurable world.”25 Pre-flight tension was always palpable, but as Flight Lieutenant Leslie McCaig of No. 426 Squadron, RCAF, confided in his diary, “there is something decidedly comfortable about bomber work—others willing to share your fate.”26
Engines coughed, rumbled, and then roared as the bombers taxied out of their dispersal area. Pilots acknowledged the thumbs-up signal from their ground crews. Flying Officer George Williams described the difficulty in getting bombers off the ground without hydraulic controls. As the bomber built up speed, “you had to lift off the ground by brute force, and by the time you were airborne you had worked up a real sweat.” When a bomber was at its maximum bomb load and fuel, the flight engineer usually had to assist the pilot at the controls. “The Lancaster engines produced 4,800 horsepower and that was a heck of a lot of torque. You had to shove the column forward to lift the tail off the ground as fast as you could or you wouldn’t be able to pick up any speed. Once the air speed was up, then you pulled back on the controls, but by then you were flying and your flying surfaces were supported by air pressure.”27
The first bombers circled the airfield waiting for the rest of the squadron. When all the planes were airborne, they flew together along the coast to the crossing point, before turning east to the Continent. The rumble of a bomber’s engines was tremendously loud and drowned out all talk that was not on the communication link. And the interior of the plane was cold. The bombers were not pressurized and only poorly heated. In winter, at 18,000 feet, the temperature was often minus 50 degrees Celsius outside, and almost as cold inside. It was usually a miserable and frigid flight as the crew members sat for hours on end, with little chance to stretch or move.
THE HEAVY BOMBERS—the Halifaxes and Lancasters—had a crew of seven. While the Lancaster overshadows the Halifax in popular memory, the two aircraft were very similar. If crews survived a tour of operations, they inevitably credited the type of aircraft in which they flew, and defended its reputation fiercely in a friendly—or not so friendly—rivalry. On any bomber, the pilot was the captain and his word was the final authority on all issues. The cockpit was on a raised platform and next to the pilot, although slightly lower, was the flight engineer. He had an uncomfortable seat that he gave up to a “second dickey” if the crew was taking on an inexperienced pilot to give him a taste of battle. Otherwise, the flight engineer assisted the pilot, watched fuel consumption, changed over gas tanks, and, when necessary, dealt with mechanical failure or the damage from flak. Almost all engineers were former ground crew and British because the BCATP did not train engineers in Canada until late in the war.
The bomb aimer was situated beneath the pilot, in the nose of the Lanc, looking down into the darkness through a transparent Perspex cupola. He manned twin .303 machine guns, although he rarely had anything to fire at since few fighters attacked head on. As the bomber closed on its target, the bomb aimer moved away from his turret and lay flat, looking through the bombsight to find some recognizable geographical feature on the ground. He was assisted by the navigator, who was situated behind a curtain that shrouded his work and kept light from spilling out into the cockpit. In the Lancaster, the rudimentary heating duct was located near the wireless operator and navigator, so they sweated uncomfortably while their mates worried about frostbite. The navigator had a table for his maps and charts, and consulted an instrument panel showing airspeed and other details that he required to plot the machine’s course and location. An H2S screen was also usually at his elbow. Most bomb aimers and navigators tried to get some time in at flying, for if the pilot was killed or wounded, someone would have to take the bomber home.
“Tail-End Charlie” was the loneliest and coldest position in a bomber, but it was critical in providing early warning of enemy nightfighter attacks.
The wireless operator manned the radios. He spent most of the time listening to broadcasts from home base and watching the Fishpond radar, which was a rudimentary screen that tracked the bombers in the stream, all moving at roughly the same speed. “If a spot of light suddenly began to drift across the screen or change position radically,” wrote RCAF navigator Robert Kensett, “there was a good chance it was a fighter plane trying to infiltrate the stream.”28 This gave the crew early warning of a possible attack, but no protection. That role fell to the gunners. In the bomber’s fuselage was the mid-upper gunner in a bubble turret armed with two .303 Browning machine guns. He was ensconced uncomfortably in a seat slung below the turret, an arse-freezer that he occupied for hours. Even worse was the situation of the tail gunner, known affectionately as “Tail-End Charlie.” He was crammed into a rotatable turret as he scanned the darkness for the waspish night fighters. “We were the eyes of the crew,” said Fraser Muir of Westville, Nova Scotia. “We couldn’t for a second stop searching the skies for enemy aircraft but also our own aircraft.”29 If an enemy fighter began its attack run—and this was usually done from a pilot’s blind spot—the rear gunner shouted out warnings to the skipper for evasive action and fired his four .303 Brownings. The Brownings had limited stopping power against enemy fighters unless they were unleashed at close range, and many bombers later were provided with two more powerful .50-inch machine guns. Tail-End Charlie was a lonely position, and it took a special man to sit in the frigid cold, watching the skies for lurking killers.
SQUADRONS OF BOMBERS from bases across Britain formed up into the bomber stream, a dense formation of planes flying through the night. On the large raids, the stream was packed several kilometres high and wide, with a tail that stretched back dozens of kilometres. Flying in pitch darkness, without lights, often meant that it was only the navigator who kept the bomber on its path, while the gunners watched anxiously for friendly planes drifting into their air space. With a stopwatch in hand, the navigator had his turning points and time over targets scribbled down to ensure that the bomber stayed in the stream. Bomber Pilot David Chance praised his crew: “My navigator was good. We were always in the middle of the stream.”30 To drift out of the stream made one vulnerable to being picked off by night fighters, who preferred to attack stragglers.
The bombers climbed steadily to their required height—the higher the better to avoid flak. Oxygen was need at altitudes above 10,000 feet. Most bombers could fly at 16,000 to 18,000 feet, and later in the war to 20,000 feet, although full bomb and fuel loads dragged them down. To see the Halifaxes and Lancasters pushing through the clouds, like giant whales through the surf, was awe-inspiring, especially when hundreds of them broke together through the cushion of white. It was a view reserved for air warriors. But above the clouds, the moon illuminated the strange battlefield. Soaring in the bright moonlight was a “beautiful but sinister sight,” recounted RCAF Flight Lieutenant Alex Campbell.31
“Flying consists of hour upon hour of utter boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror,” wrote Les Morrison, RCAF Lancaster pilot.32 Despite the minutes of fright, it was difficult for the airmen to remain alert for hours on end. “Imagine what it was like to be confined in a cramped position for all that time, particularly at night,” ruminated John Patterson. “Think of the gunners and bomb-aimers like me sitting in a turret for hours with no room to stretch, with no food except perhaps a chocolate bar, with conversation over the intercom restricted, subjected to the constant noise from the engines and expected to be alert at all times.”33 The intense cold, engine roar, and unyielding monotony dulled the senses.
The bombers faced fire from anti-aircraft batteries along the occupied French coast, and from major urban centres; the latter were avoided when possible. Experienced pilots also weaved their planes slightly, alternately climbing and descending a few hundred metres, always presenting a shifting target for the enemy. “The only place we couldn’t see was just where we needed it most—underneath,” wrote Lancaster pilot Walter Thompson. “I tried to remedy this by flying a constant and pronounced corkscrew path, asking the crew to look below as I alternately banked one way then the other.”34 Both pilot and crew knew that these manoeuvres brought with them the danger of colliding with another bomber, and so the team kept watch.
As the stream penetrated deeper into German air space, some bomber forces split away towards different targets to throw off the enemy’s defences. For the same reason, the bomber stream followed a zigzag path. German radar regularly picked up the mass of bombers and sent warnings to the cities that seemed to be in their path. These early warnings gave civilians time to reach their air raid shelters, but the zigzagging also meant that half a dozen cities or smaller centres might face disruption, rather than the single target. Each feint brought terror to hundreds of thousands of civilians.
“Once we were over enemy territory, we were silent,” remembered Halifax bomber pilot Stan Coldridge. The wireless operator listened “to the radio all the time going back and forth across the range in order to pick up recalls from Britain or tune in to German broadcasts to see if German fighters were being scrambled.”35 Any distraction might draw away eyes from sentry duty or mask, even for a second, the telltale sounds of a crew member who spotted an enemy fighter. The crew was wired into the intercom system, and when a flyer wanted to speak he switched on his microphone, and then, when he was done, he switched it off. Leaving it on stopped others from using it, and most pilots wanted to hear only from the navigator as he offered minor flight corrections, or from the gunners, who might scream out an alarm calling for immediate evasive action. When the bombers approached the target, fatigue gave way as adrenaline kicked in.
“WHEN WE GOT OVER THE TARGET,” said Lancaster pilot Donald Cheney, “all hell broke loose.”36 Experienced crews learned that it was best to be at the front of the bomber stream and at a higher altitude than the others. The bombers nearer the ground were often victims of medium flak that could be thrown up from the flak guns in almost solid shot. Meanwhile, those at the end of the stream were obvious targets because, by the time they were over their destination, the guns were alerted and often had the range of the incoming planes. It was always a challenge to run the German defences, but it was far more costly to do so when the defences were prepared. After hours of sitting and staring into darkness, the final run over the target was a pyrotechnical marvel. The ground defences operated high-powered searchlights that cut the night sky in the hope of illuminating the bombers for the flak guns. The long white beams weaved back and forth, directed by a bluish radar-guided master light. “One of the terrors was, of course, to be coned by search lights,” recalled Cheney. “One searchlight would pick you up and be able to hold onto you. If he could hold onto you for up to 30 or 40 seconds, then five or six or a dozen other search lights [would join it], then you would be coned. When you were coned, you couldn’t see a thing inside of your cockpit. You were totally and absolutely blinded. And then, of course, you were a dead duck target for either fighters or for flak.”37
When a bomber was caught in the steadily expanding cone of light, the pilot had few options. Within seconds, high explosives and shrapnel would be detonating or whirling through the air around the plane. Flight Lieutenant Walter Irwin, who served as both navigator and pilot in heavy bombers, wrote, “It was estimated that once a battery of search lights locked onto a plane, your chance of surviving was about 50%.”38 Twisting or turning was pointless: the searchlight operators were too canny to be thrown off and the beam too broad. Only an immediate corkscrew dive gave one a chance to evade the blinding lights. Lancaster pilot Les Morrison was coned over Kiel in the final months of the war. It was his first time, and as the spotlight grabbed the plane, he knew the Lanc had only seconds before other searchlights joined the first. He cut off the four throttles, pulled up the nose sharply, lowered the flaps, and dropped the wheels—this was the equivalent of braking abruptly in a car. The Lanc convulsed as if suffering an epileptic seizure. He pulled the plane over in a near-stall turn, and then rammed it forward straight down the beam of the searchlight. For those flak teams on the ground, it must have looked like the bomber was diving straight at them. As he plummeted thousands of feet, the bomber and the wind screaming in different tones, Morrison broke off his suicide plunge, shot out of the illuminating ray, and escaped into darkness.39
While Morrison survived, other crews did not. A desperate dive was dangerous at the best of times, as the chance of crashing into other planes was high, and the manoeuvre was performed in blinding light, with the control panels obscured. The g-force pushed the human body to the limit when the aircraft dropped thousands of feet in a matter of seconds, and many pilots were afflicted with temporary blindness as the blood pressure in the brain dropped and blood to the eyes was cut off. A longer and more rapid descent often could lead to a loss of consciousness.40 If the pilot did elude the two-million-candlepower searchlights, he could choose to flee the battlefield for the long trip home, or, depending on his sense of duty, return to the bedlam to drop his load.
Once they closed in on their targets, those members of the crew looking down could see the winking flak and streams of coloured tracers rising up to meet them. Flight Sergeant Miller Brittain described the elusive patterns of fire: “Jerry sends up something to scare us that is the most beautiful of all. A great red flare burst and out of it come long silver streamers like some sort of enchanted tree.”41 Bombers in the stream that were hit by the shellfire caught fire, flared, and exploded. Their surviving comrades in other bombers searched the skies, frequently in vain, hoping to see parachutes. The pilot could not afford to be distracted, even by the loss of comrades: he had to hold his aircraft steady for the final run. Air Gunner Flight Sergeant B.G. McDonald sought to capture in words the sights during a raid over Germany, but observed solemnly, “No mere mortal can possibly do justice to the violent scene that unfolded before our eyes.”42 Sergeant Edison DeMone, who was shot down on his second operation, described the flaming inferno below as “one that I shall never forget.”43 Another airman, a pilot, noted, “Looking down from the bomb run was often like looking into a blast furnace. Usually a mass of flames, bursting bombs, flak puffs, tracer bullets, shells, flares, and clouds obscured ground features. I can remember seeing only one target clearly during my thirty ops.”44
A bomber over its target.
The bomb aimer, by this point, was lying face-down in the Perspex nose. He stared through the bombsight looking for geographical features and targets. The bombsights were rudimentary at the start of the war, but they went through a series of improvements, culminating in the very good Mk XIV, which was introduced in May 1942. The Mk XIV system was an automated course-setting sight that corrected for wind through a mechanical computer to update the sights in real time as the aircraft weaved in the air. It required less time—around ten seconds—of flying level to pick up targets on the ground. The improved sights allowed the bomb aimer to be more accurate, but the system was not perfect. Bombs of different configuration and weight—high explosives and incendiaries—fell in widely dispersed patterns from a height of 18,000 feet.
The crew was silent on the intercom as the bomb aimer called out corrections to the pilot. It was difficult for pilots not to flinch as they flew through the black puffs of flak exploding above, below, and in front of them, buffeting the bomber, even sending pieces of jagged steel through the wings or fuselage, but the final run had to be straight. It was a time to tighten the hold on the control column stick, suck in one’s gut, and clench one’s buttocks. All around the bombers, comrades’ planes were on fire or exploding in mid-air, sending pieces of aircraft and body parts tumbling through the night sky. Meanwhile, the bomb aimer uttered his simple instructions: “Left, left, left, right, left, left, left, right, right … get on the target,” as recounted by Sergeant Pilot Arthur B. Wahlroth of No. 405 Squadron.45
On the right-hand side of the bomb aimer’s compartment were the switches for bomb selection and the bomb release button, known as the “bomb tit.” The switch was on the end of a wire and the bomb aimer gripped the tit, holding it firmly as he prepared to jettison his deadly cargo. When satisfied that he had visually acquired the target or the pathfinder’s flares marking the aiming points, he called for the bomb bay doors to be opened, which sent freezing air roaring through the fuselage. The pungent smell of cordite from exploding flak was a stark reminder to the cocooned airmen of the danger outside. And then it was “bombs gone.”
THE BOMBS DROPPED into the scorched city below, sending shock waves rippling across the plumes of fire, dust, and smoke that obscured entire city blocks. Lancaster pilot Donald Cheney, who survived thirty missions, described the mayhem: “The fires from the altitude we were flying, which would be about 18 to 19 thousand feet, looked like glowing white metal. They seemed to expand and contract and expand and contract. They looked almost like white amoeba that you would see in a microscope. It was the most incredible sight.”46 RCAF Flight Lieutenant W.E. Vaughan, who flew twenty operations during the war, remembered that “Always in the back of my mind was the bombing of civilians…. Sometimes we hit strategic targets and other times there were near misses. But civilians were always killed…. More than once I wondered, ‘How many people will those bombs kill?’ However, you couldn’t dwell on it. That’s the way war is.” Pilot Les Morrison recalled, “We received no quarter and yielded none.” As such, he felt no compunction in dropping the bombs on cities. “At the same time,” he continued, “aerial bombardment was a remote and impersonal form of warfare. Intense preoccupation with technical complexity, against a background of personal danger, insulated bomber crews from contemplation of the human factors involved…. I never met the enemy in person, nor did he meet me…. I never saw at close quarters the death and destruction delivered by a bombing attack.” Guilt welled up in some airmen, but the very remoteness of the environment they worked in provided some comfort. Morrison believed—as did many other airmen—that in the total war, everything on the ground was a target, and success for him was to “see the raging fires and plumes of smoke rising to 20,000 feet behind us, as we beat our way back to the security of Yorkshire.”47
The plane bucked when the bombs were released, as it was lightened by several tons. The pilot fought the upward jump and waited for the camera attached to the release wire of the bombs to take the picture of the falling ordnance. The thousands of pounds of high explosives and the incendiaries were followed by a flash flare dropped by the same plane and capable of generating a level of 170 million candlepower to illuminate the sky at about 4,000 feet. The flare allowed the camera to get a picture of the bomb pattern as it fell. In order to acquire the necessary photograph, however, the pilots had to keep level for a dozen or so seconds after bombs away. This was, according to mid-upper gunner Fraser Muir, “the longest and scariest time.”48 Staff officers and specialized interpreters later pored over the pictures to determine the accuracy of the attack and discover whether a crew was a “fringe merchant” that dropped its bombs off-target on purpose to avoid the most intense defensive fire.
A German woman flees a bomb blast.
When the bomb aimer finally signalled that the photographs were taken, the pilot could begin to gain altitude and fly clear of the worst of the battle zone. Now the greatest danger was that the bombers would drift into one another or be struck by another plane’s bombs. Halifax pilot Larry Keelan was always anxious about flying near another attacker’s string of bombs. He relied on his “mid-upper gunner to keep a close eye on other planes and scream like hell if he thought I should take evasive action.”49 Flying Officer Mike Harrington, a Lancaster rear gunner, recalled an operation against a refinery at Bochum. His bomber dropped its load, but then the mid-upper gunner shouted, “‘Dive to starboard, skip. There’s a kite above us with the bomb doors open.’ Before the ship could even move, a cookie from the plane above went right through our fuselage, only twelve inches behind the pilot.”50 After plummeting several thousand feet, the pilot regained control. The crew breathed a sigh of relief to find they were still alive—the bomb that struck them was not set to explode at that height or on contact. Their troubles weren’t over, however: the damaged bomber was later a target for a night fighter that raked the plane with cannon fire, forcing the crew to bail out over Germany. Most aircrews escaped the friendly fire, but there were other dangers on the way home.
Flight Lieutenant Leslie McCaig wrote in his diary of his crew’s sortie over Hanover in October 1943, when a Bf 110 crossed in front of his Lancaster’s nose while chasing another bomber—likening it to a “sleek shark on his predatory mission.”51 The Allied attackers now became defenders, with all available crews scanning the skies and manning their guns. “After leaving the target area, I always feel sort of relieved,” said bomb aimer John Patterson in his diary. “I guess everyone does. There is a strong temptation to relax, which is a very dangerous practice, as fighters may be waiting for us to leave the target area.”52
“Some of the fellows went as fast as they could get home,” recounted Flying Officer David Chance, who survived thirty-three missions. “Others stooged along, in the normal way. It was best to stay with the stream because if you got ahead of it or away from it, you were a target for night fighters.”53 There was safety in numbers: the night fighters picked off planes on the outside, below or above the stream. Wounded planes, trailing smoke or limping back on three engines, were a prime target, and the crews knew it. Theirs was a terror-filled journey.
The most important set of eyes belonged to the rear gunner. “Gunners were a different breed from other aircrew; but rear gunners were different again, even from the mid-upper gunner in the same crew,” observed one pilot.54 Nearly folded into a ball, legs cramping and stiff with cold, they scanned the skies for hours on end, looking for a darting shadow that might signify an enemy fighter. If the Tail-End Charlie spotted a fighter or saw tracer shells dancing out of the darkness, he shouted into the intercom, and the pilot went into immediate evasive manoeuvres, typically a corkscrew dive. As bomber pilot Harlo Jones commented, “This manoeuvre involved a sharp diving turn toward the direction from which the fighter was attacking, then rolling out and climbing in the opposite direction. The object was to increase as much as possible the angle of deflection a fighter would have to allow when attacking, making a miss more likely and, at night, hopefully eluding the fighter in the process.”55 Sergeant Jim Finnie, an RCAF rear gunner, remarked, “When you’re under attack, your gunners are really in control of the aircraft.”56 The gunners also had their machine guns, and although these were underpowered in comparison to the cannons on the night fighters, they could still send a hurricane of lead at an enemy plane, driving it down or away in search of easier prey.
A Halifax III of No. 429 Squadron, RCAF, over Mondeville, France. In this rare photograph, a friendly bomb dropped from a bomber above the plane has blown away its starboard tailplane. The wounded plane crashed minutes later.
In addition to the enemy fighters, the bombers had to deal with other perils, such as harsh weather, ice forming on the wings, and mechanical failure. Flight Lieutenant John Zinkham remembered returning from an operation and having to pass through a storm cloud. “No sooner did we get into it than we felt its fury. That old ‘Hallybag’ bounced and lurched around like a sheet of paper in a tornado…. Anything that happened to be loose just bounced off the ceiling, walls and floor…. Heavy bolts of lightning flashed all around us. The thunder was so loud it literally shook the big machine…. The pummelling that old Halifax took would have torn a weaker airplane apart.”57 Somehow their plane survived.
Most experienced airmen were exposed to the terror of flying through clouds and feeling the bird become more sluggish as it iced up and lost altitude. There seemed to be otherworldly problems too. In a raid over Hamburg in August 1943, Douglas Harvey described the ice building up on his aircraft as it passed through a storm. Lightning lit up the clouds around them, stunning in its ferocity and beauty. And then “sparkling blue flames leaped and snaked” within his cockpit, playing over his instrument panel.58 He knew this was St. Elmo’s fire—an uncanny weather phenomenon that manifests itself within electric fields—but nonetheless was shocked by its spectral quality, the flames seeming almost alive. Another pilot, Les Morrison of No. 424 Squadron, described being bathed in St. Elmo’s fire, his Lancaster “outlined as though by bright blue neon tubes. The propellers formed four dazzling rings of blue fire. The windows were framed in dancing blue flame. It was an awesome sight…. It also played havoc with my radio, setting up a blaze of static in my headphones which was quite intolerable.”59
It wasn’t just strange weather phenomena that reinforced the flyers’ superstitious tendencies. Mechanical failures often were attributed to tricksters from some other dimension. Gremlins, according to RCAF Flying Officer John Clark, were the “mythical creatures that were supposed to be the cause of unexplained accidents generally and, in Air Force terms, the cause of accidental operations of aircraft in flight.”60 Bomb aimer John Patterson wrote to his mother about the gremlins that plagued the planes: “I am of the opinion that there are both Allied and enemy gremlins. Different crews have reported gremlins in the engines that caused them to stutter and backfire until they finally stopped. One crew had two engines fail by enemy gremlins but our Allied gremlins put up a grim fight and were able to keep the two other engines going…. An aircraft detailed to bomb a German city turned around in circles and no one yet seems to know the reason. They are blaming the magnetic gremlins who seem to take great enjoyment in playing with aircraft compasses…. They play queer tricks on aircrews.”61 The magical, and at times malicious, gremlins added to the danger of a sortie, and in the unpredictable world of the flyer—where mechanical failure was always a possibility—it was less disquieting to ascribe a breakdown to mischievous entities than to bad luck.
During the long flight home, crew members faced their own internal issues. The seven- or eight-hour flights, when combined with bursts of adrenaline-fuelled stress, often precipitated a need to urinate or defecate. Neither was easily achieved in the unpressurized and freezing bombers. Many pilots were unwilling either to turn the plane over to the primitive automatic pilot or to make the long trek to the rear of the plane where the portable toilet, known as an Elsan, was located, so they simply peed in a can. As one pilot observed, “It took a very urgent need to crawl to it [the Elsan] through the guts of the bomber, especially if flying over enemy territory.”62 Sergeant Don McCann recalled that Tail-End Charlies were stuck in their tiny rear gun bubbles for the entire flight. They had no choice but to “take a leak right there in the turret.”63
RCAF navigator Robert Kensett described the challenges posed by an upset stomach, which often were in evidence after the stress and excitement of passing over enemy terrain and targets. After establishing plotting tracks for the pilot, Kensett made his way to the rear of the Halifax, not pleased with having to use the toilet, but certain that he would not make it back to the aerodrome without an accident. He disconnected his oxygen and the intercom wire, and headed through the narrow fuselage, his bulky uniform catching on things, his head giddy from lack of oxygen. He arrived at the throne, a square, box-like structure out in the open, with a lid that lifted up to reveal the seat and bowl. Light-headed, he plugged the oxygen back in and began to rid himself of his clothes. First the parachute came off, then the straps over his shoulders, and his one-piece flying suit, and the layers beneath it. “Sitting on the toilet with your posterior bare, you felt most vulnerable. It was stupid to think that your trousers and flying suit offered any protection whatsoever against bullets, shells and anti-aircraft fire, but in your mind, they did.”64 After flushing out his deposit over France, the exposed and shivering navigator eventually returned to his seat.
In the long hours that passed as they flew back to safe territory, the night fighters trailed the bomber stream, looking for targets. Sometimes the rear gunners spotted them, and urged the pilot to drift away into the enveloping night. Flight Lieutenant Bruce Betcher of No. 419 Squadron described what it was like to be pursued by a Ju 88 night fighter: “He was gently weaving on a parallel course about a hundred feet down and two hundred yards to starboard…. The thought occurred to me that if we dived by we might give him a blast,” but Betcher decided against it. When later he was asked by the base’s intelligence officer why he had not engaged the enemy, he replied, “Have you ever heard of the sheep attacking the wolves?”65
Enemy fighters sought to climb above the stream, and then fired off flares to illuminate the skies. Once a bomber was located, the German pilot might choose to attack it, but some experienced stalkers held off for hours, trailing the bomber stream, working their fighter into its interior, hoping that the bomber crews would let down their guard as they moved out of Germany into France, and ultimately back to the safety of British air space. Allied aircraft had an IFF (Identification Friend or Foe) signal that pulsated out from their birds. If it was turned on and working, it signalled their own anti-aircraft defences not to open fire. But a Luftwaffe fighter in the middle of the stream could sneak past these defences unnoticed. At some point, the fighter would strike. A particularly effective ploy was to follow the bombers back to their bases and attack them as they circled the airfield waiting for their turn to land, or, even riskier, to shoot up the planes once they were on the ground. Of course, such a raid left the night fighter deep in enemy air space after having stirred up a hornet’s nest. Daring becomes recklessness at some point. Fighter pilots also yearned for home.
THE MAJORITY OF BOMBERS returned to base unscathed, but some were ripped open by flak or a fighter attack, their engines knocked out, while smoke-blackened turrets hinted at disasters inside the plane. Most bombers had also exhausted all but the last vapours of fuel. Instruments might be malfunctioning or damaged. Crippled aircraft had priority to land, while the rest circled and tried not to collide in the clouds before the control tower called them down. Shot-up bombers often landed hard, on one wheel or their belly, skidding along, veering off the runway, crashing through bushes, buildings, or trees, and suffering any of the other disasters that could befall mammoth planes landing in distress. Others burst into flames on impact. Many of the planes carried corpses.
A tired Halifax pilot of No. 405 Squadron, RCAF, sipping his coffee (likely laced with rum) after a July 1942 air raid against Germany.
“Always on arriving back at base, after a successful mission, one had the most wonderful feeling of euphoria,” wrote bomber pilot Walter Irwin. “I guess it stemmed partly from the satisfaction of a job well done, but mostly from a profound feeling of relief at still being alive.”66 Mosquito pilot George Stewart, who completed fifty operations before the age of twenty-one, found satisfaction in “the tired and almost drunken feeling we had after landing and getting out of the kite.”67 The ground crews waited for them. No matter the hour, there were trucks on hand to pick up the flyers with their rubbery legs and aching shoulder muscles, and to drive them to the official debriefing. Most of the crews had gone eighteen to twenty hours without sleep and were dehydrated from heavy sweating, lack of water, and reliance on oxygen. At the debriefing room, airmen received a stiff tot of rum, which could be taken straight or mixed into coffee, with refills for those flyers who had endured particularly difficult sorties. Murray Peden, a Canadian pilot in the RAF’s No. 214 Squadron, wrote that coffee laced with Lamb’s rum “tasted terrible but worked therapeutic miracles.”68
Coming from darkness into the light of the debriefing room, combined with the belly warmth of rum, soon got tongues wagging. The debriefing officer, who was occasionally a member of the Women’s Division of the RCAF, queried the men about weather conditions, aircraft problems, and enemy defences. As one Canadian airman remembered, “They were especially interested in the raid itself and the damage inflicted to the target and the exact time that any of our own aircraft were shot down.”69 Some of the aircrews were skeptical of the value of this information, and gave pat or flippant answers. However, most flyers tried to convey accurately what they saw from their bird’s-eye view over the conflagration. The bomber’s own aerial photographs—a six photo sequence—formed the final picture of the raid.
When debriefing was concluded, the airmen returned their equipment and parachutes, went to the mess for a meal, and then to bed. Most were wrung out like dishrags, chain-smoking, with bleary eyes and shaking hands. The airmen noted the empty beds and wondered if their chums had landed at another base, bailed out over Europe, or been killed in a fiery crash. The bone-deep exhaustion pushed some immediately into a slumber, but others lay restlessly awake, with the wakeywakey pills still coursing through their system, or simply unable to calm the mind as it replayed the night’s events. And for those who drifted off, most knew that they would soon do it all again, in the seemingly never-ending battles of the bomber war.
