Those flying were swaddled like Michelin men but it still felt cold. The metal tube of the fuselage carried its own special chill. They climbed the five rungs of the ladder, through the hatch behind the gun turret amidships, and struggled to their posts. Pilot, flight engineer, navigator, bomb aimer and wireless operator wriggled forward to the nose, clambering over the thick spar that pinned together the bomber’s 102-foot wingspan. The gunners settled into their solitary nests behind them.
Each man began to run through the litany of checks and drills, second nature now from years of training and practice. For the gunners it took a few minutes. For the pilot and flight engineer it was more like half an hour. Then the pilot shouted down to the ground crew that he was ‘ready for starting’. A mechanic jumped forward to work the Ki-Gas pump and prime the carburettor of the first engine. Someone swung a white torch to indicate which engine to fire up first. From his seat, squeezed in next to the pilot, the flight engineer flipped on booster coil and main ignition switches and opened the master fuel cock. The pilot thumbed the starter button and with an explosive thud and a volley of flame and smoke, one by one the Merlin engines burst into life, filling the rural silence with a deep-throated roar. In the farms and villages around the bomber bases the noise was now as familiar as birdsong.
More minutes passed before the dials showed every engine had reached the right temperature and pressure. It was a laborious business but there was no rushing it. The machine was what got you there and got you home. This day of all days, with the finishing line in sight, was no time to get careless.
A-Able was the first away. It was 5 a.m. and still pitch-black but the clear sky promised a fine day. The Lancaster moved off jerkily, stopping and starting as the pilot tested the flaps and brakes. It rolled onto the runway, waiting for the signal on the Aldis lamp mounted on the control van to flash from red to green. Lining the tarmac were the usual party of WAAFs and ground staff gathered to wave and smile and pray for a safe return. This morning there were others present. Standing among them were the BBC reporter and soundman who had been at the briefing. That evening the journalist’s report, delivered in a bright, modern voice, very different from the plummy tones of the pre-war Corporation, would go out on the evening news:
‘Hallo BBC. This is Brian Bliss with Bomber Command. It’s Zero Hour, the attack is on and the first Lancaster’s swinging into position at the head of the runway right opposite me now … here she comes … remember this is the squadron which sank the Tirpitz and now they’re off to Berchtesgaden with twelve thousand pounders. Twelve thousand pounders! And they’re taking the attack literally to Hitler’s doorstep!’7 Millions of listeners heard the engine note rising sharply as the revs climbed, then fading as Bliss, almost shouting now, announced that ‘A-Able is off … a marvellous sight as she races by!’
In Q-Queenie, rear gunner Fred Whitfield sat in his turret and waited with the rest of the crew for their turn. After thirty operations together they knew each other as well as they did their own families. They were ordinary men from all over Britain. The pilot, Ron Adams, came from Wembley, London, Larry Brown the flight engineer was from Leeds, bomb aimer Phil Jackson from Nottingham, navigator Jim Lynam from Scunthorpe, wireless operator Jack Faucheux from Romford and the mid-upper gunner Frank Stebbings from Tunbridge Wells. Fred Whitfield was a Geordie, born in South Shields.
Starting operations in the aftermath of D-Day, they had bombed V weapons sites, marshalling yards, bridges and U-boat pens, before resuming the assault on German cities. They had been shot up by a night fighter and only made it home thanks to the skill and determination of ‘Lucky’ Adams who, though only twenty-one, was in Whitfield’s eyes ‘the best pilot in the RAF’. The gunners gave as good as they got. Whitfield and Stebbings had several kills to their credit, and the crew’s ‘press-on’ spirit had earned them four Distinguished Flying Medals and one Distinguished Service Cross between them. It had needed courage, skill and the closest teamwork to come through these trials and their faith in each other was strong. The raid they were about to embark on seemed less hazardous than most. But everyone knew of a crew that had bought it on their last mission. While he waited Whitfield ‘closed my eyes for a couple of minutes and had a few words with my God’.8
Then Q-Queenie was shuddering with the pent-up kinetic energy of four Merlin engines as Ron Adams jammed on the brakes and opened the throttle to maximum revs. He eased off and the Lancaster bounded forward. At about 50 knots (57mph) Whitfield ‘felt the turret lift as the tail wheel left the ground. “90 knots, 100 knots, 120 knots,” said the engineer, reading the speed. The skipper eased back on the control column. Queenie was airborne. We climbed, slowly gaining height.’
Once all aircraft were at 10,000 feet they formed a loose gaggle, and set course for Cap Gris Nez near their rendezvous with the squadron with whom they would be spearheading the raid. 617 Squadron were friends and rivals and their base was only a few miles from Bardney at Woodhall Spa. The two operated together often, specializing in missions requiring great skill and accuracy, and as Brian Bliss reminded his listeners six months before had finished off Hitler’s last remaining battleship with a volley of ‘earthquake’ bombs as she lay crippled in Tromsø fjord. The exploit had added extra lustre to the reputation of 617, already famous as the Dam Busters. However, as their sister squadron liked to point out, they were relative sprogs in the bombing game, having been created only two years earlier, whereas 9 Squadron dated back to 1914 and had been in continuous action from the very start of the war.
The sister squadrons made up just a small part of a huge force bearing down on Berchtesgaden. The pre-dawn sky of eastern England was thick with aircraft heading in the same direction. Three hundred and fifty-nine bombers were being thrown into the attack. Guiding them were sixteen Mosquitoes from Path Finder Force, equipped with special navigation aids to fix the target, tucked, safely until now, in the folds of the Bavarian Alps. Only five years before, an armada of this size was a distant fantasy. Yet this was not even the biggest raid of the day. An even larger formation was heading off to the North Sea island of Wangerooge, to smash up shore batteries that menaced Allied shipping delivering supplies to the port of Bremen for the armies encircling Berlin.
The RAF of April 1945 bore little resemblance to the organization Jim Bazin had joined eleven years before. In that time it had expanded enormously, evolving from a tight, professional elite drawn mainly from the top layers of society into a vast structure, more than a million strong. It had long ceased to be an overwhelmingly British enterprise. Scattered among the squadrons today were Poles, Australians, New Zealanders, Rhodesians, Americans, Canadians, Frenchmen and Dutchmen, Norwegians and Danes, only some of the sixty nationalities which had found a home in the Air Force.
The spirit of amateurism that still flickered in the pre-war service had long ago been snuffed out by the demands of war and replaced by a ruthless professionalism. Five years and eight months before, 9 Squadron had taken part in the first proper British air raid of the war. On 4 September 1939, together with 149 Squadron, they flew in appalling weather across the North Sea to attack German warships lying near Brunsbüttel. They had only dead reckoning to get them there and their twin-engine Wellingtons were loaded with primitive bombs. Against great odds, most of the raiders managed to find the target area but it was covered with cloud and fiercely defended by flak and fighters. Only one crew claimed to have hit anything. Two 9 Squadron aircraft were brought down and all ten on board killed. There would be hundreds of other futile sorties before the RAF began to function efficiently as a war machine. Now the process was complete. The days of wasted effort and useless sacrifice were long gone and the British and American air forces enjoyed almost total mastery of the skies of Europe.
The shoals of Lancasters cruised on, dark