The Dam Busters

  One wastes no time in radio chatter over enemy soil. Plotting stations need few seconds for a “fix”. Cheshire said, “Good luck to you, Mick,” and Martin answered laconically, “Good luck to you too. Be seeing you.”

  The other Mosquitoes heard it and flew on a little more cheerfully. It seemed an omen somehow, but whether for good or bad they were not quite sure.

  Apparently it was for good! The clouds thinned, winds stayed kind and exactly on zero hour they came out over Munich. No mistaking it; the flare force had arrived and massed guns were vomiting upwards. At 14,000 feet the flashes of bursts split the night and lines of red balls were marching up from the lighter guns. There must have been a hundred searchlights; pale fingers probing the dark, lighting now and then on aircraft which glinted like ants and turned to burrow into the crevices of the night. Mostly they vanished, but one was caught in a second beam, and a third. They saw it coned and held as it dived and turned and climbed, a trapped little ant. The flak hunted it; in the glare they saw the brighter flashes all round and then the ribbon of flame as the Lancaster dived again; this time the nose never lifted.

  A flare abruptly glowed in the darkness, then another, a third—five… one by one they lit till thirty hung flaming in the sky over the naked city, so that Cheshire recognised from the photographs the kidney-shaped park, the long lake, drilled streets of pygmy houses and the lined acres of the rail yards. He shouted over the R/T, “Marker Leader going in” and peeled off from 10,000 feet, holding the nose down till the little Mosquito was moving into the flak faster than she had ever travelled. Sliding past 5,000 feet he lined her up on the rail yards, focused his mind on them, still aware in a curiously detached way of shells, balloon cables and searchlight dazzle, hoped he would miss them and coldly shut his mind to them. The little plane was shivering with the headlong surge and the busy fury of the engines; Cheshire barely heard the screaming noise : she was twisting in the rising speed against the trim and he was coaxing her to arrow dead straight in the dive, forcing himself to wait for the dragging seconds till he suddenly jabbed the bomb button and eased back on the stick. He felt her lifting out instantly, the mounting “g” ramming him hard down into his seat, a phantom load dragging at his lips, his cheeks, his eyeballs and his blood, heavier and heavier, till his vision was greying out as the Mosquito flattened low over the roof-tops, curved up and climbed nimbly away. He let her lift into the darkness over the flares before he rolled her out on one wing, looked over the side and saw his markers, two red eyes glowing in the rail yards.

  Shannon dived in the same way and put his markers within a hundred yards of Cheshire’s. Kearns did likewise. Cheshire called the 617 Lancasters, told them to back up, and minutes later their clusters of incendiaries splashed into brightness on the rail yards.

  It was the spearhead that Bomber Command had never had over Munich; even the giant flashes from the 8,000-pounders and the coils of smoke soon rolling over the rail yards did not hide the pin-points of the markers, and the bomb aimers made the most of it.

  The destruction was not all on one side. Cheshire several times saw the trails of flame, like shooting stars, streaking for the ground and the explosions when they hit. It was the flak that caused most of them. Nearly all the fighters had been sent to Karlsruhe or down to Milan, and few had enough petrol to fly back to Munich.

  Petrol shortage or not, Cheshire flew full throttle round and round the inner city at 1,000 feet, checking the accuracy and ready to call up with new instructions if the bombing looked like moving off the target area. The gunners below could hear him and the searchlights and flak chased him, but the Mosquito was too fleet. Once a beam held him for a second and destroyed his night vision, but he was too fast to hold low down and passed into darkness again. Light flak exploded around him; he heard the crack of the shells and the aircraft shook from near misses. A dozen lumps of shrapnel gashed it and hit the engines but hurt no vital spot.

  Satisfied he could do no more he turned for home; the other Mosquitoes were already on their way. It was not a happy trip back; no flak or fighters to speak of, but Kelly doing intricate petrol calculations, thumbing the fuel gauge, plotting his track and e.t.a., and trying to look philosophical. It seemed the longest trip they had ever made, and then they came in over Manston with ten minutes’ petrol on the gauges. Some gauges on low tanks are as reliable as a woman’s intuition. They might have petrol for ten minutes, or fifteen minutes, or ten seconds, and were going to need at least five minutes for approach, circuit and landing.

  Throttled right back in coarse pitch, Cheshire flicked his navigation lights on and dipped his nose towards the long runway, where the flarepath shone like a stolid but comforting guard of honour. Kelly said: “What’s wrong with their runway? Look at those funny lights down there.” Cheshire looked… puzzled. There were lights blinking in and out of the flarepath. “Funny,” he said. It hit him suddenly and shouted to Kelly, “Turn those navigation lights off. It’s a Jerry fighter.”

  The target, they found out later, was Gerry Fawke, just settling down on the runway. The fighter had stalked him round the circuit and gone for the kill when Fawke had his flaps, undercart and speed right down and was helpless, unable to turn sharply—unless he wanted to stall and spin in. Luck, it seemed, stayed with 617 that night. The German fighter, with a “sitter “in front of his guns, missed completely. Fawke rolled to a stop and the flarepath flicked off. Cheshire made a careful approach, took a quick sight at the last moment with his landing lights and set his aircraft down safely. In the briefing room he found the other Mosquito crews. None had got down with more than fifteen minutes’ petrol to spare (a terrifyingly small margin).

  Shannon said, “Wake me at sunrise. I want to see it.”

  Back at Woodhall later in the morning, they found the 617 Lancasters all back except Cooper. No one ever found out where Cooper went down. Cochrane flew over, showing what was, for him, extravagant delight, a wide but faintly embarrassed smile, as he congratulated and thanked them. He said to Cheshire, “You might like to look at this.” It was an aerial photograph of Munich, brought back by recce Mosquito an hour earlier. Round a couple of scars on the outskirts were circles of ink, and Cochrane tapped the spots with his finger. “That’s how it was up to yesterday afternoon after all the other raids.” He put his finger on the cratered rail yards. “Last night,” Cochrane said. “It seems to justify us.”

  The photograph staggered even Cheshire, who knew what the bombing had been like. There must have been a hundred times more damage in that one raid than the dozen previous ones, especially as the previous damage had been on no significant target. This time they had struck an effective blow.

  It proved Cheshire’s contention that he could mark a heavily defended target at low level without undue risk, but the photograph also showed that one solitary marker from the high force had fallen outside the target area and drawn some of the bombs, so that a lot of houses were either gutted shells or mounds of rubble. Unfortunate though that was, it led to further improvement in the marking technique. Cochrane and Cheshire had both thought it too dangerous to rely on one marker only, since it might be obscured by smoke or hit by a bomb. Now they realised that dropping too many markers could also be risky, and thereafter they tended to cut the number of markers down to try and eliminate such accidents as the one stray marker at Munich.

  On the strength of Munich, Cochrane drove down to see Harris and asked for four extra Mosquitoes so that another of his squadrons could learn the 617 way of target marking.

  Harris, who never did things by halves, said, “Not four Mosquitoes, Cocky”; and almost before Cochrane could feel his disappointment Harris went on, “I’m sending you a squadron of Mosquitoes from Pathfinders and two Pathfinder Lancaster squadrons. You can operate as a group by yourselves now. Get 617 to teach the new Mosquitoes low marking, and then they can mark for your group, with the two Lanc squadrons as flare force. That’ll release 617 for some special jobs.”

  CH
APTER XV EARTHQUAKE BOMB

  COCHRANE sent for Cheshire and took him walking in the grounds of headquarters away from listening ears.

  “You’ll be doing no more operations for a month,” he said, “and then you’ll be doing a very special one. You’ll spend the next month training for it.”

  He would say no more, but next day a scientist, Dr. Cock-burn, arrived at Woodhall from London and also took Cheshire walking. They lay alone on the grass by the air field, obviously for privacy. Cockburn said : “I understand you can be trusted to keep your mouth shut, so I’m going to tell you something a lot of Cabinet Ministers and generals don’t know yet. You know by now an invasion is coming off very soon. If the weather is right it will be in about a month, and landings will be made west of Le Havre. We want to fool the Germans we’re going in somewhere else.”

  Cheshire waited.

  “On that night,” Cockburn went on, “there’s going to be a big convoy fourteen miles wide passing across the Channel at seven knots.”

  “Sounds a pretty big invasion,” Cheshire said.

  “That isn’t the invasion. They’ll be heading towards Cap d’Antifer, on the other side of Le Havre.”

  “A diversion!”

  “Yes.”

  “I must say,” Cheshire said, “it sounds a pretty big diversion. Have they got all those ships to spare?”

  “No. They won’t be ships. They’ll be you and your boys.”

  Cheshire rolled over and looked at him. “Us!” he said blankly and then got the glimmerings of an idea. “Dropping window?”

  “That’s it,” said Cockburn. “It’s going to need the most precise flying you’ve ever done. Can you do this… can you all fly in a very wide formation, invisible to each other, and do a lot of intricate manoeuvring, keeping within three seconds of all your e.t.a.’s and within twenty feet of your height.”

  “I don’t know. Doesn’t sound very possible.”

  “It’ll have to go on for hours and hours,” Cockburn said, “so you’ll do it in two waves. Eight aircraft for a few hours and then the second eight taking over from them.” He went on to explain the technique: lines of aircraft a set distance apart, flying precise courses at precise speeds and height, throwing out window at intervals of a precise number of seconds. The planes would fly thirty-five seconds on course, turn evenly, fly a reverse course for thirty-two seconds, a slow turn again back to the first course and start throwing out more window. They would thus start the original course again at a point slightly ahead of where the previous one started and the first of the new lot of window would drop from the aircraft at the moment that the first bundle dropped on the previous leg hit the water, so there would be no interruption of the steady blips on German radar. It would go on like that for eight hours, timed to give an effect of a large convoy several rows of ships deep moving at seven knots towards the French coast.

  The training never let up except for one day when the weather closed in. Otherwise there was no moment, night or day, in the next month when some 617 aircraft were not flying, particularly by night, cruising at a steady 200 m.p.h. on a steady course and height, curving in even turns to reverse courses, turning back on the stop watch, unspectacular, tedious and demanding meticulous care and skill.

  They all sensed the invasion was drawing near; Cheshire had the idea that the Germans might drop paratroops on British airfields on D-day, so he persuaded Doc Watson’s armament section to issue as many aircrew as they could with either a revolver, Sten gun, rifle or hand grenade. It was one of his few sad mistakes. For three days life was a precarious possession at Woodhall. First they set dinner plates up on the lawn near the mess and loosed off at them with Sten guns from the second-floor windows. That palled after a while, so they started lobbing hand grenades in the general direction of the sergeants’ mess. At night time Buckley became a terrible menace, keeping a vigil by his bedroom window and loosing off clips from his Sten gun over the heads of late home-comers so that they had to crawl to bed over the back lawn on their bellies.

  Even Witherick, who was known to be too durable for death by any of the known methods of war, commented uncomfortably, “The only time you’re safe on this squadron is when you’re in the air ! “It became obvious that German paratroops were less of a menace than the local aircrew army, so Cheshire collected all the weapons and returned them to the armoury. Peace descended once more on the mess, to the regret of Shannon and McCarthy. Shannon and McCarthy were rarely seen apart; they drank together and dined together and it was logical, therefore, that they should act together to revive the reign of terror, climbing to the roof of squadron headquarters to drop a Very cartridge down the adjutant’s chimney. They knew the innocent Humphries had a fire in the grate.

  A Very cartridge in artful hands is like a semi-lethal firework; exploding in a confined space it resembles a small but concentrated bombing raid, providing a monstrous crash, sheets of coloured flame and clouds of choking smoke. Half the beauty of the thing is that it goes on for about fifteen seconds. They dropped it down the chimney and started laughing as the waves of sound came rocking up from below.

  Unfortunately it was not Humphries’ chimney, but the commanding officer’s. Cheshire scuttled out, pursued by flashes and rolling fumes, ran on to the tarmac and spotted his two flight commanders hiding behind a chimney. With aristocratic dignity he said nothing but for several nights Shannon and McCarthy found themselves doing duty officer together, an irksome task which kept them out of their beds and abstemiously patrolling the station buildings.

  Throwing Very cartridges into the mess fire had long been a favourite sport, so Cheshire thought it time to issue a stern order that no firearms, cartridges or pyrotechnics of any kind be brought into the mess building.

  He was woken that night by a scuttling outside his window, threw it wide open and saw a rat running across the roof. Quick as lightning he grabbed his own .38 revolver from his dressing-table and took a pot-shot that bowled the rat over and echoed through the quiet night like a small cannon. Cheshire was still leaning out of his window, revolver in hand, when the next window shot open and the head of Danny Walker poked out. “Got the dirty rat that time,” Cheshire said triumphantly and became conscious of Walker’s eyes staring coldly, focusing on the hand that held the gun. He felt his face going red and ducked inside, laying the pistol down, and heard Walker’s voice next door, talking loudly to a mythical room-mate, “But I tell you, old boy, I distinctly heard the man say that no one under any circumstances was to have a firearm inside the mess.”

  On June 5 everyone was confined to camp, and at dusk, with guards on the doors of the briefing room, Cheshire told the crews that the invasion was about to start. The first wave of eight planes took off about u p.m. with twelve men in each aircraft, an extra pilot, extra navigator and three men to drop the bundles of window out.

  They made absolutely no mistakes that night, though it would have taken an error of only four seconds in timing to make the convoy suspiciously change position on the German radar. Hour after hour they flew in the blackness over the Channel, turning on stop-watches up and down on reversed courses while the window was tossed out at four-second intervals. Round 3 a.m. the second wave of eight aircraft took over, the trickiest part of all because they had to come in directly behind with split-second timing to carry on. They saw nothing of the invasion.

  They were to break away just before dawn, before the light was good enough for the Germans to see from the shore that they had been tricked. By that time they should be within ‘seven miles of the French coast, and that is exactly where they were. Farther north another squadron was doing a similar task with at least as much success.

  They had their reward as they turned for home; the German coastal batteries opened up… not the flak but the big guns, aiming 12-inch shells by radar prediction at the ghost armada. German E-boats came out from Calais and Boulogne but they would have needed aerial torpedoes to do any damage.

  It is history now tha
t the Germans really thought the main invasion was aiming at that area. (In prison camp in the heart of Germany that day, I heard the German radio announcing two huge armadas heading in towards Cap d’Antifer and Calais. It gave us great joy, but we wondered for months what had happened to those convoys.)

  Inland from Boulogne and Dieppe the bulk of the German Army, which should have been hurrying to the real invasion area on the other side of Le Havre, waited… and waited, poised to swoop on the armadas that were not there. By the time the Germans woke up to it other squadrons had blasted bridges over the Seine between them and the invasion and the Allied troops were consolidating their landings with greater freedom from counter-attack than they had dreamed possible.

  Cheshire was driving round the perimeter track with Munro that evening for no particular reason that he can remember, and just past the A Flight hardstandings they passed a huge tarpaulin-covered lorry cruising slowly along.

  “What’s that doing here?” Munro murmured, not very curiously, and Cheshire, his head still full of D-Day precautions, said, “Lord knows. Let’s find out.”

  They drove across the lorry’s bows; it stopped and they climbed out of their jeep and went back to the lorry driver. “What have you got in there?” Cheshire asked.

  “Boilers for the cookhouse, sir,” the driver said.

  “Aren’t you going the wrong way? The cookhouse is over there,” Cheshire waved a hand to the rear.

  “Well I dunno, sir. They told me to deliver them over there.” The driver pointed to the far side of the field.

  “The bomb dump! That’s the bomb dump. Who told you that?” A suspicious edge had crept into Cheshire’s voice.

  “That’s what they told me, sir.”

  Cheshire said, “Let’s have a look at this, Les. Something funny here.” He heaved himself over the tailboard of the lorry. Another tarpaulin covered a shapeless bulk in the back; he tugged a corner clear and, unbidden, a grunt of surprise came out of him. “Look at these ! “