大象传媒

In July 1944 we were posted to 550 Squadron, North Killingholm, a wartime airfield just south of the Humber. A squadron of American B17 Fortresses was stationed nearby and occasionally crews from one airfield would perform a low-level attack over their neighbour鈥檚 territory. This would earn an immediate reprimand from one or other station commander.

Our first operation was a daylight attack on the Caen battlefront, the largest combined allied air force operation of the war. After dropping their bombs, crews of 900 RAF Lancaster and Halifax aircraft saw hundreds of American Liberators and Flying Fortresses putting the finishing touches to the operation.

On the same night, 18 July, we were detailed to attack Scholvenbuer, a Ruhr oil refinery. The weather was good and the aiming point clearly visible below the Pathfinder sky markers. Ice blue master searchlights incessantly probed the sky for single aircraft. Once caught an aircraft would immediately find itself at the centre of a cone of light, flak was intense and there would be a speedy end to the unequal contest. Random flak was also severe, but crews preferred to ignore this in order to shorten the bombing run. Gunners constantly searched the sky for night fighters whose pilots would not hesitate to fly through their own flak to gain a kill, Lancaster or Halifax, they didn鈥檛 mind; collisions between aircraft were not infrequent. The final danger was from bombs released by higher flying aircraft.

Post-war film gives an idea of the conditions crews encountered over heavily-defended targets, but nothing matches the reality of an environment where time is the fourth dimension and eternity 25 seconds. Crews count those final seconds as bomb aimers wait for the camera to react to the photoflash mechanism. This procedure was obligatory because without it crews would have no photographic record of the accuracy of their bombing. As soon as the bomb aimer gives the word, navigators set course and pilots streak for home. The target continues to echo to the crump of flak, searchlights weave across the sky and the ground rocks to the detonation of 4,000 pound 鈥榗ookies鈥� and greasy black smoke from erupting oil tanks coils ever upwards and the fumes mingle with the acrid smell of dead flak until the last aircraft has left the scene.

On 26th July 1944, my 21st birthday, we took part in a raid on Stuttgart. Things began badly. Crossing the French coast the Royal Navy targeted us, but luckily their aim was not as accurate as German flak. Next, the gunners spotted a Messerschmitt 110 and there was an exchange of fire. Lancaster aircraft had recently been fitted with a new radar device code-named Monica which enabled wireless operators to identify night fighters at a pre visible range and then to alert the gunners. From then on survival depended on liaison between pilot and gunners. On that night fighters were everywhere and the resultant evasion tactics caused us to lose time so we arrived late over the target. Consequently we were among the last few aircraft to bomb, but that night the flak was unexpectedly less intense. Two nights later, on 28th July, we were again among crews briefed to attack Stuttgart.

One day in August we were detailed to attack a V2 rocket launch site on the Pas de Calais. A rocket was on the launch pad as we began our bombing run, and as an avid reader of science fiction, I could not resist saying, 鈥淟ook, a space ship,鈥� which earned me an immediate rebuke from the skipper.

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