The Dam Busters

  A pleased Cochrane rang Cheshire next day. “Pack your over-night bag,” he said. “You’re coming down with me to see Air Chief Marshal Harris about a couple of Mosquitoes.”

  That night they dined with Harris in his house near High Wycombe. Over the port Harris suddenly said, “Cheshire, what makes you think you can mark from nought feet in a Mosquito and get away with it?”

  “There’s no question that we can mark accurately, sir. The only thing is having a reasonable chance in the face of heavy opposition. Air Vice-Marshal Cochrane thinks a Lancaster is too big and slow. Against heavy opposition I’m inclined to think now he is right, but I believe he agrees with me that the chances in a Mosquito are good. I believe in a Mosquito we can have a go at any target under the sun and mark with under twenty yards accuracy.”

  “I’ve always wanted to bomb Munich properly, and I’ve never succeeded,” Harris said. “It’s got four hundred guns. D’you think you could mark that on the deck and get away with it?”

  “Yes, sir. I do.”

  Cochrane cut in, saying that they should practise first with the Mosquito on less lethal targets so they would know precisely what was possible.

  “All right,” Harris said, “I’ll see if I can get you two Mosquitoes… just on loan for a month. If by that time you can mark Munich accurately for me, you can keep them.”

  Just behind Calais the Germans had started work again on the bornb-proof rocket and long-range gun bases. Thousands of slaves were crawling over the massive blockhouses and it was obvious that the secret-weapon project was nearing completion again. Whitehall knew now that the weapon was to fall on London and the invasion ports, but kept it very secret. If the secret weapons started up before the invasion and the R.A.F. could not destroy the blockhouses, London would be destroyed and it was likely that the invasion would also be wrecked..

  Churchill was insisting on twice-daily Intelligence reports. Some reports put the weight of the secret-weapon warhead as high as 10 tons of explosive and suggested they might fall at a rate of thousands a week. Churchill ordered the preparation of plans for the evacuation of London and told Sir Arthur Harris that the blockhouses were to be destroyed without fail before they were ready for action.

  Wallis’s “tallboy” was the only weapon Harris knew of that might smash them, but the “tallboys” would not be ready for some time. They would have to be dropped from at least 18,000 feet to get enough speed for penetration, and only one squadron could drop them accurately enough. But the sites would be so well camouflaged in the bomb-pocked earth that a bomb aimer would have trouble getting them in his bomb sight from 18,000 feet even by day. Though the sites were fairly plastered with flak they would have to be marked clearly and with unprecedented accuracy because there would be no “tallboys “to waste. It was a pretty problem, and Harris called the Pathfinder chief, Bennett, and Cochrane and Cheshire to a conference at his headquarters.

  Bennett said frankly that the Pathfinders were not equipped to mark with such accuracy, and Cochrane suggested that 617 might be able to do the marking as well as the bombing.

  Cheshire said: “I doubt if it could be marked accurately at medium level. You’d have to run-up straight and level, and at that height the searchlights would blind you so you couldn’t see the target, and the flak would pretty surely get you anyway. I should think, sir, we could mark it at very low level in a diving attack.”

  Cochrane said warningly, “Not in a Lancaster.”

  “No, sir. In a Mosquito, as we discussed before. She’s so fast we could be in and out before the defences could nail us.”

  A day later Cochrane phoned Cheshire: “I’ve got two Mosquitoes for you. They’re over at Colby Grange. Go and learn to fly them and be quick about it. Let me know as soon as you’re ready to use them.”

  Cheshire was delighted with the Mosquitoes, and within two days felt at home in them. The only possible fault he could find was that, carrying a load of heavy markers, their range might be a little short for some of the more distant targets. Munich, for instance, would be barely within range, so he asked Group to get him some long-range drop tanks as soon as possible.

  Signs of the squadron’s growing prestige were not lacking. March brought them nine more decorations; popular ones. Among them were a Bar for Martin’s D.S.O., a second Bar for Cheshire’s D.S.O., a Bar for Whittaker’s D.F.C., and the D.F.C. to add to Foxlee’s D.F.M.

  Cheshire flew down to Weybridge to see Wallis about tactics for dropping the “tallboys”.

  “I haven’t really designed this thing for concrete,” Wallis said, “so I think, my dear boy, it might not be a good thing to drop them right on the roofs of those wretched concrete affairs; they might bounce out again like corks. However, you needn’t worry; just drop them down at the side in the earth and they’ll bore down and blow them up from underneath.” He stuck pins in a diagram to show the vulnerable points and added disapprovingly, “The Germans are very silly not to put twenty feet of concrete under these things, not on top.”

  Cheshire suggested as tactfully as he could that, though he had enormous faith in his squadron, it was one thing to stick pins in a diagram and another to drop a bomb in that spot from 20,000 feet.

  “Oh well,” Wallis said huffily, “if I’d known you propose to scatter the bombs around the countryside like grass seed I’d never have bothered to design them.”

  CHAPTER XIV THE UNAPPEASING OF MUNICH

  ON April 4 Cheshire reported to Cochrane that he was ready with the Mosquito. Cochrane rang Harris and asked permission for his whole group to operate by themselves, led by 617 to mark the target, which was to be a large aircraft factory just outside Toulouse. Harris agreed, and next night they took off.

  Cheshire found his Mosquito handled delightfully. A flare force lit up the factory and Cheshire dived fast and low over it, but, not satisfied with his positioning, pulled up sharply without dropping his markers. Heavy flak opened up on him as he corkscrewed away. He would almost certainly have been hit in a Lancaster, but the shells did not even scratch the Mosquito’s paint. He dived again, once more was not satisfied and pulled up in a hail of shells. The third time his markers fell in the centre of the buildings, and again he climbed steeply away, unscathed. At 10,000 feet the squadrons moved in. Munro put an 8,ooo-pounder right on the markers and the rest of the bombs slathered the spot.

  In the morning a recce aircraft found the factory flattened and only an occasional crater in the fields beyond.

  Four days later 617 continued the experiment, going alone, led by Cheshire in the Mosquito, to attack the biggest German air park and signals depot in France, at St. Cyr, some two miles west of Versailles. Cheshire put his nose nearly straight down from 5,000 feet, let his markers go from 700, and they lobbed on the western corner of the target. He ordered the bombers in and soon rolling coils of smoke hid the target.

  Cheshire landed as dawn was breaking and found Cochrane in the de-briefing room; he had been waiting up all night to see how the raid went and took Cheshire aside.

  “That’s the end of the experiment, Cheshire. I’m satisfied you can do it low in Mosquitoes now, and we’re going to start thinking of the big targets. I’m getting you four new Mosquitoes. Train three or four picked pilots to use them and be quick about it.”

  The four Mosquitoes arrived that afternoon, and in the next six days McCarthy, Shannon, Kearns and Fawke spent their waking hours flying them. They were to fly Mosquitoes exclusively from now on and their crews were split up. Shannon kept the tough Sumpter as his navigator. Danny Walker stayed as squadron navigation officer, Goodale went off for a well-deserved rest, and Buckley joined another crew. The lanky and good-natured Concave had won a D.F.C. and Bar as a wireless operator, which is not far short of a miracle, because decorations for good work by a crew usually went first to the pilot, then to the navigator and bomb aimer. Or to a gunner who shot enemy aircraft down, or an engineer who had a chance to keep battered engines going in the air. A wireless operato
r had little chance.

  Decorations were a vexed question because there was no way of equitable distribution. Cheshire had strong views on the subject; as usual, unorthodox views but extraordinarily perceptive. Generally he divided courageous aircrews into two categories: (a) men with acute imagination who realised they would probably die and who forced themselves to go on, and (b) men who, though intelligent, could shut their minds off from imagination and carry on without acute forebodings of the future,, Cheshire puts himself in the second group and, typically, regards the first group as the braver men.

  “That’s the highest form of courage,” he said once. “They have a hell of a time but keep going. Usually they’re not the spectacular types and they don’t win the flash awards, but they’re the bravest.”

  He told me once: “Decorations are not particularly a test of courage but a test of success. There aren’t many awards for failure; a few, but not many, no matter what bravery was shown.”

  On April 18 Cheshire reported to Cochrane that the Mosquito crews were all ready, and that night 617 marked for 5 Group againt Juvisy marshalling yards, eleven miles south of Paris.

  Munro’s flares lit the area beautifully: Cheshire, Fawke, Shannon and Kearns dived to 400 feet and lobbed their spot fires into the middle of the web of rails, though one bounced outside. It all went like clockwork. 617 bombed the spot fires accurately, as usual, and then the rest of 5 Group, 200 Lancasters, surged in and excelled themselves. They were used only to area bombing and not precision bombing, but this time, with the bright aiming points of the markers, they put nearly all their bombs in the target area. Some fell outside on the marker that bounced but morning reconnaissance showed the ragged end of rails in acres of erupted earth where a thousand craters overlapped each other. (It was eighteen months after the war before the yard was again in action.)

  From the spot fire that bounced, Cheshire learned the importance of releasing the markers before the Mosquitoes started to flatten out of the dive, and that was another step towards perfection of the technique.

  Once again 617 lost no aircraft and the Mosquitoes did not have a single hole among them. To Cheshire and Cochrane— and to Harris too—it was further confirmation of their ideas.

  Cochrane flew to Woodhall, saw Cheshire privately in Cheshire’s office and, as usual, wasted no words :

  “Now you can have a crack at Germany. Tomorrow you’re going to Brunswick… One Group as well as Five Group, so you’ll be leading about four hundred aircraft. Pathfinders will drop flares and you’ll mark with red spots.”

  There was one alternative, he said. If cloud hid the target, special radar Pathfinders would mark “blind” with green spots instead.

  * * *

  The first P.F.F. flares went down over Brunswick, but Cheshire could see no target (rail yards) by their light. More flares went down seven miles north, and over that spot Kearns and Fawke saw the target and dropped their red spots “on the button”. Cheshire gave the order to bomb, and the first bombs were just exploding when the reserve radar Pathfinders ran into cloud near-by and dropped their green spots on fields three miles away. Most of the main force, according to orders, turned for them.

  Cheshire called till he was blue in the face, but the radio was jammed and only a few aircraft picked up his message. Nearly all the bombs fell on the wrong markers out in the fields.

  After they landed back at Woodhall, Cochrane flew over in his Proctor and Cheshire started apologising for the mix-up. Cochrane cut in:

  “All right, Cheshire. Don’t you worry about that. You did your part perfectly. We’ve learned a bit more from it and we’ll see the trouble doesn’t happen again. How do you feel about Munich?”

  “As soon as you like, sir. We’re ready.”

  “I’ve been on to Air Chief Marshal Harris. If the weather is all right you’re going tomorrow night, leading the whole group again. You’ll go for the rail yards.”

  Together they planned it, and this time it looked as though it could not miss. Bomber Command was to raid Karlsruhe half an hour before to draw the fighters. 617 was to lead 5 Group towards Switzerland as a feint; six Lancasters were to swerve south towards Milan dropping bundles of “window” (thin strips of metal foil) to delude German radar into thinking 5 Group was heading for Italy. Just before the Group reached Munich, radar Pathfinders were to drop flares, and Cheshire and the Mosquitoes were to mark, the rest of 617 were to drop more markers from medium level with the S.A.B.S. in case the early markers were blown out, and then the 200 Lancasters were to bomb.

  One point worried Cheshire. “Munich is about as far as a Mosquito can get without overload tanks,” he said. “I’ve asked for them but they haven’t come yet. We’re not going to have enough margin for bad winds or upset timing without them.”

  “Give Group a sharp nudge about them,” Cochrane said.

  “I’m going down to the C.-in-C. with the plan.”

  Cheshire phoned Group, and they said they would do all they could. He phoned them again next morning and was dismayed when they told him the tanks were in acutely short supply and other Mosquito units had priorities.

  Cheshire got hold of Pat Kelly, his navigator, and they worked out a new plan for the Mosquitoes: to fly first to Manston, in Kent, a hundred miles nearer the target, pour in all the petrol they could and fly straight to Munich across all the defences. Kelly plotted the distance, worked out their range from Manston and looked up grimly.

  “If everything goes dead to time—which I’ve seldom seen —and if the winds are ah1 in our favour—which I’ve never seen—we might just get back, but probably won’t.”

  Cheshire went to a high officer at base and explained respectfully that, even taking off from Manston, he doubted if the four marking Mosquitoes would get back. It was usual to have a couple of hours’ petrol in reserve—at least—to allow for contingencies. With the very best conditions they might arrive back with a few minutes’ petrol. Personally he had never had to fly on a raid in such conditions. Nor did he know anyone who did. What should he do?

  The answer was not inspiring.

  “If you can’t do this marking in Mosquitoes,” the high officer said, “you’ll have to do it in a Lancaster. Whatever you do the raid has to go on.”

  Cheshire said, “Yes, sir.”

  He went back and collected the four Mosquito crews. They got a preliminary Met. report: heavy cloud—possible ice cloud—over the western half of Germany; perhaps clear over Munich. At 14,000 feet the winds might be reasonably favourable. The four navigators bent over their calculations and looked up grimly.

  Kelly said, “If everything goes perfectly we might get back to Mansion.” They all knew that a raid rarely went perfectly.

  One of them exploded: “Hell sir, we don’t mind sticking our necks out over the defences. That’s just part of the job, but we can’t see any point in such an unnecessary risk. What sort of fools are we supposed to be?”

  Cheshire said, “I’m sorry, but we’ve got to go.” There was a brief silence and one of them said, “All right.”

  The four Mosquitoes flew down to Manston and were refuelled and parked at take-off point so they would waste no fuel taxi-ing. Sitting silently over dinner with the others, Cheshire got a phone call from Cochrane.

  “I’m. deeply sorry about the overload tanks,” Cochrane said. “Can you make it?”

  “We’ll have a go, sir. I think it will be all right.”

  “I just want to let you know,” Cochrane said, “I’ve had a word with the C.-in-C. When you get back he’s giving the whole squadron a week’s leave.”

  Cheshire went and told the others, and Kelly said acidly, “Fat lot of good that’s going to do us.” Cheshire had never seen them like that. They seemed almost on the verge of mutiny, not because they were too scared (they were scared all right, but so is nearly every airman before a raid), but this time it was unnecessary.

  Around dusk Cheshire said, “Well, let’s get it over.” They walked out sil
ently; it was clear over England, the sun dipping under the horizon and the sky above flaming orange. Cheshire said, “What a glorious sunset!” From the others a sullen silence, and then Shannon, without even lifting his eyes towards the west, said, “Damn the sunset. I’m only interested in the sunme.”

  They took off without warming up, climbed straight on course to 14,000 feet and over the North Sea ran into heavy cloud. * * *

  They were coming up to the Rhine. Or hoped they were. Cloud lay on the earth like a deep, drifting ocean, rolling up unbroken to 17,000 feet, and in the hooded glow of the cockpits each pilot found comfort in the dim shape of his navigator beside him, feeling they were outcasts sealed in a small world. Beyond the numbing thunder of engines lay nothing but blackness and they only sensed that somewhere in a few square miles of sky they were together, unseen. Cheshire broke radio silence to ask Shannon how he was finding the weather and felt his scalp prickle as a voice out of the past spoke in his earphones, “Is that you, sir?” He recognised it instantly, through the static and the careful anonymity… Micky Martin.

  He called back, “Is that you, Mick?”

  “Yessir.”

  “Where on earth are you?”

  “Oh, I’m around.”

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  “Sticking my neck out for you types.”

  (Martin was a hundred miles away in another Mosquito, a night fighter, his job being to “beat up” German night fighter fields, encouraging the fighters to stay on the ground while the bombers plastered Karlsruhe and Munich; another part of Cochrane’s planning.)