The Dam Busters

  Moreover, Cochrane knew Wallis well; had worked with him in the Royal Naval Air Service in World War I, flying his experimental airships and testing the world’s first airship mooring mast, which Wallis had designed. Ever since then Cochrane had had a quick sympathy for the scientific approach.

  That night a nuggetty little man with a square, handsome face, named Guy Gibson, took off on the last trip of his third tour. If he got back he was due for leave and a rest, having been on ops almost constantly since the war started. The target was Stuttgart and his Lancaster was laden with one of the new 8,ooo-lb. “blockbusters” (not the penetrating “earthquake” type that Wallis envisaged, but bombs had made startling strides in the past year).

  An engine failed on the way to Stuttgart and the aircraft would not hold her height. Gibson eased her out of the stream, dropping towards the ground, but headed on. The last trip of a tour is an ordeal with its hopes of a six-months’ reprieve. Before take-off the reprieve seems so near and yet so far, and waiting to get it over is not pleasant. Gibson took a chance rather than turn back and go through the waiting again.

  Over Stuttgart he had the other three engines shaking the aircraft at full power and managed to drag up to a safe enough height to drop his bomb, then dived to the dark anonymity of earth and hugged the ground all the way back. That was Gibson’s 173rd trip. He was a wing commander with the D.S.O. and D.F.C. Aged twenty-five.

  He woke late, head still ringing with the engine noise, and lay curled up, half thinking, half dreaming of leave in Cornwall. That morning his leave was cancelled and, to his dismay, he was posted to 5 Group Headquarters.

  A day or so later he was shown into Cochrane’s office and saluted smartly.

  “Ah, Gibson,” Cochrane said. “Firstly, my congratulations on the bar to your D.S.O.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Would you like to do one more trip?”

  Gibson gulped and said, a little warily:

  “What kind of trip, sir?”

  “An important one. I can’t tell you any more about it now except that you would command the operation.”

  Gibson said slowly, “Yes, I—I think so, sir,” thinking of the flak and the fighters he hoped he had finished with for a time.

  “Good ; that’s fine. I’ll let you know more as soon as I can,” and a moment later Gibson was outside the door, wondering what it was all about. He waited two days before Cochrane sent for him again, and this time another man was with him, Group Captain Charles Whitworth, who commanded the bomber base at Scampton, a stocky, curly-haired man of about thirty, with a long list of operations behind him and a D.S.O. and D.F.C. on his tunic. Gibson knew him and liked him.

  Cochrane was friendly. “Sit down,” he said and held out a cigarette. “I asked you the other day if you’d care to do another raid and you said you would, but I want to warn you that this will be no ordinary sortie and it can’t be done for at least two months.”

  Gibson thought: “It’s the Tirpitz. Why did I say yes!” The 45,000-ton “unsinkable” battleship was lying in a Norwegian fiord, a permanent menace to the Russia convoys and a lethal target to tackle.

  Cochrane was still talking. “Training for this raid is so important that the Commander-in-Chief wants a special squadron formed. I want you to form it. You’d better use Whitworth’s main base at Scampton. As far as aircrews are concerned, you’ll want good ones; you’d better pick them yourself. I’m telling all the squadrons they’ll have to give up some of their best crews. I’m afraid they won’t like it, so try and take men who are near the end of their tours. There’s a lot of urgency in this because you haven’t got very long and training is going to be very important. Go to it as fast as you can and try and get your aircraft flying in four days.”

  “Well, er… what sort of training, sir?” Gibson asked. “And… what sort of target?”

  “Low flying,” Cochrane said. “You’ve got to be able to low-fly at night till it’s second nature. No, I can’t tell you the target yet. That’s secret, but you’ve all got to be perfect at low flying. At night. It’s going to be the only way, and I think you can do it. You’re going to a place where it’d be wrong to send a single squadron at the normal height by itself.”

  Gibson knew what that meant. Germany! A single squadron at 15,000 feet would get all the night fighters. It was not so bad for the main force, the stream of hundreds of bombers; they confused the enemy radar, dispersed the fighters, and there was protection in numbers. Not so with a lone squadron. But low level, “on the deck,” yes. Well, maybe! Well, it was going to be low level anyway. Over Germany! He knew a man named Martin who knew all about low flying over Germany. Gibson had met him when Martin was being decorated for it.

  Outside the door Whitworth said, “See you at Scampton in a couple of days. I’ll get things fixed up for you. I imagine you’ll be having about seven hundred men.”

  Somewhat bewildered, Gibson went off to the S.O.A. to see how one went about forming a new squadron. A staff officer helped him pick aircrew from the group lists. Gibson knew most of the pilots—he got the staff man to promise him Martin and help him pick the navigators, engineers, bomb aimers, wireless operators and gunners ; when they had finished they had 147 names—twenty-one complete crews, seven to a crew. Gibson had his own crew; they were just finishing their tour too, but they all wanted to come with him.

  The Staff Officer Personnel told him how many men of different trades he wanted for his ground crews and promised to siphon off picked men from other squadrons and post them to Scampton in forty-eight hours.

  The equipment officer promised to deliver ten Lancasters to Scampton within two days. Just for a start. More would follow. With them would come the spare spark plugs and tools, starter motors and drip trays, bomb dollies and winches, dope and paint and chocks and thermos flasks. Gibson was startled by the unending list. Another man promised the thousand and one items for the men: blankets and lorries and bootlaces, beer and socks, toilet paper and so on. He was two days on these details, helped by Cochrane’s deputy, the S.A.S.O., Group Captain Harry Satterly, a big, smooth-faced man who was excellent at detail; and then it was all done— except for one thing.

  “What squadron are you?” Satterly asked.

  “What d’you mean, sir?”

  “What number? You’ve got to have a number.”

  “Oh,” said Gibson, “where d’you get that?”

  “Somewhere in Air Ministry,” Satterly said, “but they probably don’t work so fast there. I’ll get on to them and fix it up. Meantime you’d better call yourselves ‘X Squadron’.”

  * * *

  Just before dinner on March 21, Wing Commander Guy Gibson, D.S.O., D.F.C., commander of “X”, the paper squadron, arrived at Scampton to take formal command. In the officers’ mess he found some of his crews already arrived and the mess waiters looking curiously at them as they stood around with pints of beer in their fists. It was obvious they were not to be an ordinary squadron; the average age was about twenty-two but they were clearly veterans. D.F.C. ribbons were everywhere; they had all done one tour, and some had done two. Gibson moved among them, followed by the faithful Nigger, his black Labrador dog, who rarely left his heels.

  From his old 106 Squadron, Gibson had brought three crews as well as his own—those of Hopgood, Shannon and Burpee. Hopgood was English, fair and good looking except for a long front tooth that stuck out at an angle. Dave Shannon, D.F.C., was a baby-faced twenty-year-old from Australia, but did not look any more than sixteen, so he was growing a large moustache to look older.

  Gibson spotted Micky Martin with satisfaction. They had met at Buckingham Palace when Gibson was getting his D.S.O. and the King was pinning on the first of Martin’s D.F.Cs. Though he came from Sydney, Martin was in the R.A.F., slight but good looking, with a wild glint in his eyes and a monstrous moustache that ended raggedly out by his ears. At the Palace they had talked shop and Martin had explained his low-flying system.

  He ha
d worked it out that if you flew lower than most bombers you would avoid the fighters; lower still and the heavy flak would all burst well above. And if you got right down to tree-top height you would be gone before the light flak could draw a bead on you. There was still the risk of balloons, but Martin reasoned there would not be any balloons along main roads or railways, so he followed those. He had had the same two gunners for two years. Toby Foxlee and Tammy Simpson both fellow-Australians, and on their low-level junkets they had become expert at picking off searchlights. Simpson and Foxlee had both come with him; he’d also brought an experienced navigator, a lean, long-chinned Australian called Jack Leggo, and his bomb aimer, Bob Hay, also Australian, had been a bombing expert at Group. Leggo was to be navigation officer of the new squadron, and Hay was to be bombing leader. It is unlikely that there was a finer crew in Bomber Command; hence Gibson’s pleasure.

  He had chosen “Dinghy” Young as his senior flight commander . Young had already ditched twice in his two tours, and both times got back home in his rubber dinghy. Bred in California, educated at Cambridge, he was a large, calm man whose favourite trick was to swallow a pint of beer without drawing breath.

  Les Munro was a New Zealander, tall, blue-chinned and solemn, a little older than the others. He was standing by the bar looking into space when Gibson located him. “Glad to see you, Les,” Gibson said. “I see you’re setting a good example already, drinking a little and thinking a lot.” Munro upended his pint and drained it. “No, sir,” he said, “thinking a little and drinking a lot.”

  The other flight commander was Henry Maudslay, ex-5o Squadron, ex-Eton, an athlete, polished and quiet, not a heavy drinker. Towering above the rest was the blond head of a man who weighed nearly 15 stone, with a pink face and pale blue eyes; good looking in a rugged way. Joe McCarthy, from Brooklyn, U.S.A., former life-guard at Coney Island, had joined the R.A.F. before America came into the war.

  No one knew what they were there for but, looking at the men around them, realised something special was in the wind. Someone finally asked Gibson what “the form” was and Gibson simply said: “I know less than you, old boy, but I’ll see you all in the morning to give you what gen I can.”

  In the morning Gibson called all the crews to the long briefing room on top of station headquarters and said:

  “I know you’re wondering why you’re here. Well, you’re here as a crack squadron to do a special job which I’m told will have startling results and may shorten the war. I can’t tell you what the target is or where it is. All I can tell you is you’ll have to practise low flying day and night until you can do it with your eyes shut… .”

  He went on to talk about training and organisation, and when it was over the crews trooped out with little flutters in their stomachs, the sort of feeling you get before a raid. It goes once you get into the air.

  Dinghy Young and Maudslay were busy dividing the crews into flights and Gibson walked over to No. 2 hangar, the great steel shed that was to be squadron headquarters. Inside, a dapper little man with a toothbrush moustache broke off his interviewing and saluted smartly; Flight Sergeant “Chiefy” Powell had just arrived to be the squadron’s disciplinary N.C.O. The ground crews were arriving in scores and Powell already had half of them organised in their billets and sections.

  Cochrane rang Gibson: “I’m sending you over a list of lakes in England and Wales that I want photographed. Get someone on to it as soon as you can.”

  Gibson, who had learned not to ask questions, said, “Yes, sir,” wondering when the fog of secrecy was going to lift.

  Gibson spent hours interviewing his aircrews, sizing up the ones he didn’t know, and found that some of the squadron commanders, told to send their best men, had played the age-old service game and got rid of a couple they did not want. Gibson told them to pack and go back. He walked into the mess bar just before dinner, tired but feeling they were getting somewhere, and Charles Whitworth buttonholed him.

  “Well, Gibby,” he said, “you’re going to command 617 Squadron now.”

  The little man looked thunderstruck. “What ! “he exploded. “617? I thought… I… Who and where are they ? “

  “Here,” said Whitworth peaceably. “You. Your new number. Someone in Air House has moved off his bottom. Your Squadron marking letters are AJ.”

  He called for a pint each and they drank to 617 Squadron.

  CHAPTER V OVER THE HURDLES

  HUMPHRIES, the new adjutant, arrived next afternoon; a little fair-haired man, only twenty-eight, he was keen on flying but his eyes had stopped him. Gibson told Humphries as much as he knew himself, and as Humphries was leaving his office Gibson said:

  “I don’t know yet what it’s all about, but I gather this squadron will either make history or be wiped out.”

  In the morning the curtain lifted a little. Gibson got a call from Satterly, who told him to catch a certain train to Wey-bridge, where he would be met at the station.

  “May I know who I’m meeting, sir?”

  “He’ll know you,” Satterly said.

  Gibson walked out of Weybridge Station at half-past two and a big man squeezed behind the wheel of a tiny Fiat said, “Hello, Guy!”

  “Mutt,” Gibson said, surprised. “Are you the man I’m looking for?”

  “If you’re the man I’m waiting for, I am,” Summers said. “Jump in.” They drove down the winding tree-lined road that leads to Vickers and went past the main gates without turning in. “What’s this all about, Mutt?” Gibson said, unable to hold back any longer.

  “You’ll find out.” He turned off up a side road to the left. “You wanted to be a test pilot for me once. D’you remember? “

  “I remember.” That was when he had first met Summers. It must have been eight years ago now, back in 1935, when he was eighteen. He had wanted to fly, so he had got an introduction to Summers at Vickers and asked about becoming a Vickers test pilot. “Go and join the Air Force and learn to fly first.” Summers had advised.

  “You’ll be doing some testing soon,” Summers said. “Not for me exactly, but quite a test.” He turned in some double gates and they pulled up outside the house at Burhill. Summers led the way into a room with windows looking over the golf course, and a white-haired man got up from a desk.

  “I’m glad you’ve come,” Wallis said. “Now we can get down to it. There isn’t a great deal of time left. I don’t suppose you know much about the weapon?”

  “Weapon?” Gibson said. “I don’t know anything about anything.”

  Wallis blinked. “Don’t you even know the target?”

  “Not the faintest idea.”

  “My dear boy,” Wallis said in a sighing and faintly horrified voice. “My dear boy.” He wandered over to the window and looked out, pondering. “That makes it very awkward. This is dreadfully secret and I can’t tell anyone whose name isn’t on this list.” He waved a bit of paper in Gibson’s direction and Gibson could see there were only about half a dozen names on it.

  Summers said, “This is silly.”

  “I know,” Wallis said gloomily. “Well, my dear boy… I’ll tell you as much as I dare and hope the A.O.C. will tell you the rest when you get back.” Gibson waited curiously, and finally Wallis went on: “There are certain objects in enemy territory which are very big and quite vital to his war effort. They’re so big that ordinary bombs won’t hurt them, but I got an idea for a special type of big bomb.”

  He told Gibson about the shock waves and his weird idea for dropping bombs exactly in the right spot. Gibson was looking baffled trying to follow the shock wave theory.

  “You’ve seen it working in pubs, Guy,” Summers said. “A dozen times. The shove-ha’penny board. Remember how you get two or three discs lying touching and flick another one in behind them. The shock waves go right through them but they all stay where they are except the front one, and that goes skidding off. That’s the shock wave.”

  “Come and I’ll show you.,” Wallis said and led Gibson
into a tiny projection room. Wallis thumbed the switches and a flickering screen lit up with the title “Most Secret Trial No. 1.” A Wellington dived into view over water and what looked like a big black ball fell from it, seemed to drop slowly and then was hidden in spray as it hit. Gibson started in amazement as out of the spray the black ball shot, bounced a hundred yards, bounced again in a cloud of spray and went on bouncing for what seemed an incredibly long time before it vanished. He was still staring at the screen when the lights went up again.

  “Well, that’s my secret bomb,” Wallis said. “That’s how we… how you’re going to put it in the right place.”

  “Over water?” Gibson said, fishing for a clue.

  “Yes,” but Wallis avoided the subject of the target. “Over water at night or in the early morning when it’s very flat, and maybe there will be fog. Now, can you fly to the limits I want, a speed of two hundred and forty miles per hour, at sixty feet over smooth water, and be able to bomb accurately?”

  “It’s terribly hard to judge your height over water,” Gibson said, “particularly smooth water. How much margin of error is allowed?”

  “None. That’s the catch. Sixty feet. Just that. No more. No less. So the aiming will be accurate.”

  “Well… we can try. I suppose we can find a way.”

  “There’s so much to do.” Wallis sighed.

  On the way back to Scampton, Gibson puzzled over the target. The only likely ones, he decided, were either the Tirpitz or the U-boat pens, and he shuddered a little at the thought of a low-level attack on them. They would be smothered in guns. At Scanipton he found some Lancasters had arrived and ground crews were checking them over. In the morning he told his senior men what height they would have to bomb at but nothing about the bomb itself.