Chapter Nine

I had a horrible feeling of guilt. They say conscience makes cowards of us all. I could not get out of my mind that I had given a wrong order the previous night. It was only a miracle my belongings were not being checked too. What if there was an enquiry? I had given an order; ‘Turn port’, and yet all the damage was on the port wing. Added to this was the disquieting thought that I was not competent to do my job. What was the good of having a highly trained efficient crew if the rear gunner was a drongo? I felt with a certainty this is where the others had failed; that their first sudden attack had been their last.

I knew there was a certain uneasiness amongst the crew. Kiwi voiced this as we were having a shower by asking, ‘Did you see that Jerry before he attacked last night, Johnny?’

‘Only a second or two before he opened fire,’ I replied.

After an uncomfortable pause he asked, ‘Do you reckon you gave the right order?’

‘Of course I bloody well did,’ I declared, ‘and if you think you can do better you can take my place.’

‘Don’t get your shirt off, I was only asking.’

‘You can go and get fugged,’ I said with feigned indignation, and walked out.

I have always felt attack is the best form of defence so, as we were going in to lunch with the crew I said, ‘Kiwi wants to know if I gave the right order last night. What do you boys think?’

Ninnes replied, ‘Well, we’re all here. Must have been fairly right.’

‘I’ve been giving it some thought, but I can’t make out if the attack came from your starboard how he came to pepper our port wing and then apparently broke to port,’ said Snowden.

‘I’m buggered if I know. Perhaps he was a sprog, too.’

This had the effect of clearing the air, and I found that my fears with regard to an enquiry were unfounded as the squadron had so much on its hands with the number of unserviceable planes that not a question was asked. Because the station was virtually immobilised through losses and damage we were all given forty-eight hours’ leave.

Though insufficient to take us to London, this still placed Norwich within our reach so our crew, together with most of the squadron, caught a local train.

There was little talk as we chugged through the flat countryside. It was as if I could feel that fighter’s breath down my neck as he swept by, only a few feet away from us just a few hours before. Three of our crowd gone. It was a miracle Kiwi and I hadn’t joined them.

On arrival at Norwich we booked our beds in the local Lions Club and started the inevitable pub crawl. After a few drinks with us, Williams, Snowden and Ninnes, who had little accord with our drinking habits, decided to see a show.

Later in the evening, as we were getting well and truly on the way, Mac broached the subject that was at the back of our minds. ‘We might as well get blind,’ he said. ‘It’ll be the last chance some of us will get.’

‘Balls,’ said Blondie. ‘I reckon I’ll be around for a long while.’

‘That’s what Gunner and the other two thought last week,’ countered Mac; ‘three out of twelve is twenty-five per cent in four operations. On that average there won’t be any of us left in another twelve.’

‘Mac’s right,’ said Hally. ‘I don’t like our chances. The whole bloody trouble is that while they train pilots, navigators and wireless operators, they don’t give a damn about gunners. What training have we had? None of us had more than ten hours’ flying up before we joined the squadron. What the RAF hasn’t woken up to is when a plane is attacked it’s completely in the charge of the rear gunner. He’s the bloke who gives the orders and tells the pilot what to do. Why, it’s only a miracle that Johnny and Kiwi didn’t go last night too. That would have been five out of twelve.’

Kiwi started to speak but, catching my jaundiced eye, changed his mind.

They say a drunken man speaks a sober man’s mind, so I said, ‘I’ll admit I didn’t see the Jerry until he opened fire. To tell the truth the attack was virtually over before I could say anything. This bloke certainly didn’t conform to all the bullsh I learnt at the training schools. I agree with Mac; we’re dead ducks unless we can smarten ourselves up.’

The grog may have helped. It swept away all pretence of reserve and false pride. We admitted we were mug gunners, and in a spot; the problem was what to do about it. During the discussion we found we all suffered from the same thing: embarrassment to say or report anything for fear of showing our ignorance.

‘I think we all want a good talk with our crews to get a better understanding,’ Hally declared. ‘It’s team-work that eventually counts.’

On the way back in the train next day, Kiwi and I had a talk with Snowden and Ninnes on our discussion. I said, ‘We seem to fly like strangers and I, for one, don’t like opening my mouth for fear of making a blue.’

Kiwi remarked, ‘I haven’t said a dozen words in the three ops.’

Snowden said, ‘Could be something in what you say. Looks like we’ll have to get together.’

One good result was it made us think and talk over our problems. We all agreed it was obvious that night-fighter tactics were completely different from what we had been taught and that night-fighters obviously stalked their victims and then moved in for a quick kill. The only protection against this was constant vigilance.

Another advantage was we all openly discussed our greenness with the rest of our crews, which had the effect of overcoming the initial barriers of silence that had ridden with us on operations. This in turn started to develop the first signs of a good team spirit that was necessary for survival. Previously I considered that, apart from the navigator and pilot, we had been virtually flying as separate units, but now these talks were helping to weld us into a crew. It was stated that sixty per cent of mishaps occurred in the first four or five operations, so if a crew could survive this critical period, their chances of survival were greatly increased.

Another point that emerged from the discussions was, why the hell we used the nautical terms ‘starboard’ and ‘port’ in an aircraft, remembering that the gunner was sitting with his back to the pilot, so that his port was the pilot’s starboard. We agreed the use of these terms was likely to lead to error because, first of all, the gunner had to think which was port and which was starboard, and having decided that, he then had to think in reverse as far as the pilot was concerned. By the time he’s sorted it all out, they were all dead ducks.

Happy said, ‘I don’t know why they don’t use “left” and “right”.’

It was Ninnes who came up with a solution. He asked, ‘Why don’t we treat the plane as a clock; make the nose twelve o’clock and the tail six? Thus the right wing would be three and the left wing nine, so that a plane coming in, say, on the gunner’s left quarter, could be quickly placed at four or five o’clock and, if dead astern, at six o’clock.’1

The gunners discussed this new plan and declared it to be a good one. They in turn talked it over with the pilots who agreed it was much better than the old patter that must have been born in the days of the First World War.

We referred it to our gunnery leader, who said he felt sure the Wingco would not agree, but said he would refer it to our headquarters. The CO, who by this time had ‘had’ gunners in general and us in particular, jumped on it with both feet.

But Hally said, ‘Who the hell’s going to know what orders we give? I reckon this is easy. I’m going to talk my crew into using it; it saves those precious seconds that are the difference between copping the chop and getting home.’

Our crew conferred. Nav was for it. Snowden was uncertain. He had the Englishman’s ingrained dislike of going against authority.

Kiwi’s bright suggestion that we take the kite out for a training flight and try out both systems was killed when the navigators were called to an early meal. This meant it was on again and all planes would be grounded while they were got ready for the night’s op.

This called for some fast decisions. Ninnes said, ‘I reckon we’d better decide. The easiest way would be to take a vote on it. How about you, Johnny?’

‘New one,’ I said. ‘Simple and easy. We can give it a try as we’re going across the sea to get used to it.’

‘How about you, Kiwi?’

‘I’ll go with Johnny – he’s the bloke that cops most of the attacks.’

Jones voted with the gunners. The second pilot said, ‘I think it’s a matter for our captain.’

‘I don’t intend voting on my own idea, but I reckon we should follow the gunners,’ said Ninnes.

Snowden said, ‘You know I stick for regulations, but I’m out-voted by my crew and will abide by the vote. Let’s try it going out. I want to live, too!’

There were only eight crews at briefing, this being the maximum number of planes the squadron could muster. The target was Bremen; this, the briefing officer explained, being selected as an easy target. The lights were switched off and the epidiascope2 became the only illumination. The met officer gave the weather forecast, a high-pressure system over the Midlands which could mean fog on our return.

An aerial photograph of our target was projected onto the screen. They say Bremen is the second port of Germany. As I looked at the clustered buildings, the mass of streets, I thought fleetingly of the unsuspecting citizens and women and babies who would die that night. This thought passed quickly as I remembered London, Coventry, Rotterdam and the French refugees strafed on the roads. I saw the groping searchlights, the flak, the fighters who would rise to pluck their percentage of bombers from the sky.

In dozens of rooms such as this throughout England, hundreds of eyes would be looking at this self-same photograph; twenty-five bombers would mean one hundred and fifty pairs of eyes would not see the sun rise in the morning.

The voice droned on: there was information for pilots, navigators and wireless operators. The gunners sat in silence. ‘We may as well be back in the mess for all the bloody notice they take of us,’ Blondie remarked.

As we careered down the runway and took off into the darkening evening, a new spirit was evident in the plane. Gone were the awkward, strained silences of previous ops. The calls from each crew member were clear and alert. Kiwi reported flak ahead just as Ninnes said, ‘Enemy coast coming up,’ and almost simultaneously, ‘Searchlights at eleven o’clock.’

Down below, over what should have been the sea, I saw red lights twinkle maliciously. At ten thousand feet it meant seven seconds before those hurtling trajectories burst. ‘Flak at seven o’clock,’ I reported.

Our pilot immediately dropped the nose into a sharp dive and bursting flak jolted the plane, but as the main burst was upwards we missed the full effects of the explosion.

‘Where’s that flak coming from?’ Ninnes asked. ‘We’re not over land yet.’

Below, the lights twinkled again, and dead astern a light blossomed suddenly, illuminating the sky and sea for the duration of its death-sentence descent. It was then I saw the flak-ship well out from shore – a deadly trap to catch the unwary.

Kiwi said, ‘I think I see the target ahead.’

‘That would be it,’ said Ninnes. ‘Six minutes to target.’

‘Christ,’ said Kiwi, ‘do they call this an easy target? Look at that bloody flak.’

I felt the usual creep of hair on my neck; the rear gunner having no front view could only listen to these disturbing remarks.

‘Going in to target,’ said the pilot and then we were in a maelstrom of flak, searchlights and bombs. It always baffled me how you could live through such violence. The only conclusion was that there was so much air that it took a lot of shells to fill it. Cordite and smoke filled the plane.

‘Bomb-doors open.’ Then, after an eternity, ‘Bombs away!’

Snowden threw the plane into a steep turn as we turned for our run out, and I saw the nightmarish glare of fires and explosions. A searchlight gripped us for a second but, with a vigorous flick of its tail, S for Sugar slipped from its grasp. Gradually the lights and flak lessened and we were out. Glowing behind us arose the flames of the bombed city.

From this supposedly easy op two sprog crews, both on their first flight, failed to return. They had come to the squadron only fourteen days before.

Next day a special parade was called and the CO announced that we had a new ally, for that morning Hitler’s Panzer divisions had smashed into Russia. He made it clear that he didn’t have a very high opinion of the Russians and their fighting abilities. I thought Happy would burst a blood-vessel. ‘Listen to that one-eyed, bird-brained bastard,’ he declared. ‘If brains were dynamite he wouldn’t have enough to blow his cap off.’3

Despite the CO’s lukewarm acceptance of our new fighting partner, we shared Happy’s view that it was the only bright bit of news that had come from the fighting front for many a long day. Happy pointed out that the all-conquering Napoleon had fallen on his face over a similar project a hundred years before. In addition, anything that split the Nazi’s aerial fighting strength was something our way.

Two nights later it was on again and Jonesy complained bitterly it was time they gave him a break. Met reported that fog would develop just after we left, but would clear by the time we returned. If not, we were to divert to an aerodrome in the north-east. We would be advised of these locations later.

As we flew over the coast, the plane seemed to vibrate more than usual and the climb seemed less steady. Finally, Snowden said, ‘I don’t like the look of the port engine. The pressure seems to be down.’

Approaching the enemy coast it was evident something was wrong. We had only reached eight thousand feet instead of the anticipated ten; not that a thousand or two was unusual in this worn-out kite, but we copped quite a pasting going on.

Snowden reported the pressure was falling rapidly and, after a discussion with our second dickey Williams, a decision was reached that we return. This was not an easy decision on the part of our pilot because he would have to bear the brunt of any enquiry on our return. Coming back we again copped a pasting, for in addition to the wham of the heavy stuff we were bashed by light flak.

S for Sugar was virtually flying on one engine, but with her nose down and her tail up we soon out-distanced the unwelcome attentions of the coastal defenders.

Coming back over our coast we crossed a northbound convoy and, despite Jonesy firing the colours of the day, those itchy-fingered coots must have decided any plane coming in from the east could have nothing but bad intentions, and they got stuck into us.

To add to our problems, Jonesy then reported base was out and we had divert to a place called Claxstone. Williams said he knew the place; it was headquarters for 4 Group. As we were scheduled to arrive by approximately 9.30, this conjured up hopeful thoughts of frivolity, for headquarters were noted for their sumptuous surroundings and luxurious appointments.4