Chapter 18
The better weather promised by the Met. Office arrived the next morning; Friday the 24th of March, 1944. The brass at High Wickham went over their strategic targets and selected one; Berlin. It was to be the last major raid on the German capital. The invasion of Europe was imminent and targets were changing from strategic to tactical and from Germany to France.
The crews didn't like Berlin. The flight there and back took at least seven hours, unlike the two or three hours to northern France, and for most of the time they were subject to anti-aircraft fire or pursuit by German night-fighters and, while these dangers were accepted as the normal course of war, it was the risk of death posed by their own bomber stream, including collision with, being bombed by or being shot at by their own side, which they found difficult to accept.
Jack's father looked at the orders. He knew his son was on his last mission and that his squadron was part of the night's bomber force. He had hoped Jack would complete his tour with a couple of easy half-mission targets, such as a 'gardening' operation, dropping mines off the coast of Denmark or Holland or a tactical target in northern France. He wished he could have changed the target; but even that wouldn't have helped much. The skies of Europe were dangerous whatever the destination and, whatever people thought, there were no milk runs.
At Langton the day started at dawn. Even those not privy to the plans of the RAF brass knew the weather was going to be good and in all probability, it would mean the squadron would be flying. The planes scheduled to fly were sitting on their pads, being worked on by their mechanics. Jack's plane was being prepared by a ground crew led by Sergeant Al Findlay; a taciturn Scot who had an almost encyclopaedic knowledge of the mechanics of aeroplanes and in particular, the Lancaster. Armourers were preparing bombs; four thousand pound cookies for the lead planes and smaller bombs and incendiaries for those trailing them; the cookies to blast open the buildings and the incendiaries to set fire to them.
The mandatory flight test was brief as there had been a problem with a generator, but the ground crew had managed to locate the fault and repair it. When they landed, Jack toured the plane with the flight engineer; he couldn't understand those who waited until just before take-off when they were distracted by the immediacy of the mission.
The afternoon was spent on individual briefings with the navigators, flight engineers and wireless operators receiving specialised details of the route, petrol loadings and call signs. At five the crew ate their evening meal; a ration-breaking fry-up featuring bacon, eggs and beans – some crews referred to it as 'the last supper'. At six o'clock all the crews gathered in the briefing room with both the C.O. and the Wing-Commander in attendance. The intelligence officer entered the room and took down the cloth, which was covering a map of the western part of Europe on which red ribbons dog-legged to Berlin. Among the veteran crews a few groans were heard. They had been to Berlin, some far more often than they cared to remember, and there was nothing good about it.
The instructions were lengthy. There was going to be a feint raid on Kiel using Mosquitoes – lucky them, at over 400 knots in level flight they could outrace even the quickest German night-fighters – and another, into France, in an effort to convince German controllers that a site in southern Germany was the target. The main force was to head east; cross over Denmark and, over the Baltic, turn south-east and head for Berlin. The weather forecast for the raid was reasonably good, with winds of seventy-five mile per hour the only problem expected. There was to be variable cloud for both the inward and outward journeys and over the target and a quarter moon. The lack of moon and the partial cloud cover would cause them to rely on the Pathfinder force in locating their target, but would provide some protection from the night-fighters.
Jack took-off immediately after the Wing-Commander's plane and headed for the collection point over the Norfolk Coast. There were 811 planes heading for Berlin and it was well over an hour before the last one joined the stream. The journey over the North Sea was uneventful, although the experienced crews knew it was only the lull before the storm. They knew the Luftwaffe had been tracking them since the first plane took to the air and, even now, radar operators were relaying information to night-fighter stations. It wouldn't be long; once they cleared the flak barrier they would be fair game for the enemy fighters.
