LITMIR.BIZ

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unjustly at him was now turned upon the real enemy: Krefeld.

      The Group Captain preferred not to wear his spectacles except in the privacy of his office. He didn’t look at Lambert directly, he closed his eyes and nodded wisely, as though he had known about that city centre too.

      Other technical officers continued the briefing. Sandy Sanderson, Squadron Engineer, was wearing an expensive blue lambswool roll-neck and as he spoke of the fuel-loads he kept peering to see if there were any women among the journalists. The Gunnery Leader said that Lancasters were still coming back with damage by .303-inch bullets. ‘British bullets. That means trigger-happy gunners firing at shadows. Keep awake, keep alert and keep the turrets moving so that the oil stays warm and thin, but remember that there are two-motor bombers with us tonight, so don’t open fire until you positively identify the night fighter.’

      The Signals Leader gave details of the splasher frequencies – a rapid change of frequencies for bearings from beacons – and then the Met man gave them an outline of the weather situation. His curving line of cold front was in places two hundred miles in error and his prediction of its midnight frontal positions was even more inaccurate, but it would make no difference to these crews, who were going only as far as the Ruhr. There they would find anti-cyclonic weather as predicted.

      ‘Moon full, rising 00.30 hours at target: one hour before zero. Sunrise is 05.46 hours, so you won’t have to worry about sun-up. Now the cloud: along the enemy coast there’ll be some well-broken layer cloud. The residual thundercloud will have followed the cold front and won’t affect you. Over the target area you’ll have a very thin layer of medium cloud between 1,000 and 20,000 feet. Sorry I can’t be more precise than that, but it will probably have cleared by 01.00 hours.’

      ‘Jesus!’ said Digby without lowering his voice. ‘We’re going to be dancing naked in the full moon and he consoles us that we needn’t worry about sun-up.’ Loudly he said, ‘Anyone want to buy my wristwatch?’ There were a few laughs.

      Even if the Met man didn’t hear Digby’s exact words he interpreted the sentiment without difficulty. Hurriedly he added, ‘You’ll have enough stratocumulus at 2,000 to 3,000 feet to give you some cover; visibility moderate. The bases will be the same: stratocumulus at 2,000 to 3,000 feet; visibility moderate. You’ve had your winds, navigators. Northwest wind over target, remember. See me afterwards if there’s anything else.’

      The last man on his feet was Wing Commander Munro, the Squadron CO. Young ‘Tapper’ Collins wasn’t the only man who was completing his tour of operations that night. John Munro was also embarking on his final trip of the tour, with the difference that this was Munro’s second tour; tonight was his sixtieth bombing raid.

      Munro spoke in the carefully modulated tones of the British upper class. ‘Not much to say tonight, gentlemen. Flak concentrations: the map speaks for itself. You are routed to by-pass these unfriendly regions, so don’t wander off or invent some new route that you believe to be better. Keep in the stream and you’ll avoid most of these red patches.’

      Sweet called out, ‘What about a route that avoids that big red patch?’ The big red patch was the Ruhr, so everyone laughed. The Wing Commander smiled as broadly as he knew how to. ‘Keep in the stream, chaps, and watch your bombing heights. The only collision danger is over the target and if you keep to your height band it is almost eliminated. Don’t run across the target except from the north-west where the datum marker is. It’s rather like driving a car in traffic: keep on your side of the street and you are perfectly safe, but drive across the traffic stream and the chances of colliding are considerable.’ His audience, few of whom had ever driven a car, nodded knowingly.

      ‘And no evasive action over target. There’ll be no night fighters there when the flak is firing. Once you’re clear, keep to the return route and timing. This is a well-planned show, chaps. It’s a big raid – about seven hundred aircraft – with Lancasters, Wellingtons, Halifaxes and Stirlings.’

      ‘Hooray,’ shouted a dozen old-timers from the back of the room. Munro looked up and smiled. On recent raids 12.9 per cent of the Stirlings had been lost compared to only 5.4 per cent of the Lancs. If it comforted them to know the poor old Stirlings would be with them, lumbering slowly along at their feeble ceiling and drawing the brunt of the flak, why should he spoil it? But his young brother was piloting a Stirling this night, and the smile was a mask.

      When the briefing ended there was a clatter of boots and a buzz of conversation as the flyers shuffled out through the door and into the golden world of the afternoon sun where the air smelled of newly cut grass. Munro buttonholed Flight Lieutenant Sweet near the door. ‘A word to the wise, Mr Sweet. These crew reshuffles: bad biz. If any of them want to change crews tell them to come and see me.’

      ‘You mean Cohen and Digby?’

      ‘I mean Cohen and Digby.’

      Sweet smiled winningly. ‘They were requests. Digby asked if …’

      ‘Before you go on, old chap, let me tell you that this afternoon I had Flight Sergeant Digby, Royal Australian Air Force, on my neck, flushed with the exertion of hard-pedalling around the peri track, flatly refusing to leave Lambert’s crew. These chaps get superstitious, you know.’

      ‘We can’t win a war on superstition.’

      ‘Oh, I wouldn’t go so far as that. Old Hitler’s been using it pretty strenuously and gaining quite a bit of ground. The old torchlight processions and secret signs, eh? No, if these chaps get comfort from their toy bears and lucky lingerie hanging by the windscreen, let them have it, I say. That goes for crewing too.’

      ‘But that’s mutiny, isn’t it? Surely Flight Sergeant Digby should have come to me in the usual way if he thinks he’s running B Flight.’

      ‘I can see you haven’t had much experience of our Australian allies, Mr Sweet. I’m damned lucky he demeaned himself to mention it to me. There are quite a few of his countrymen who would have been on the blower to Australia House and done it via their Prime Minister and ours if they thought they were being victimized.’

      ‘You’re joking, sir.’

      ‘I wish I were. Don’t know how, in fact. My trouble, I suppose. Anyway, Mr Sweet, forget Digby going to your crew even if he is the best bomb aimer in the Squadron. And even if your bomb aimer is by far the worst …’

      Sweet smiled again. ‘Oh, it wasn’t for that reason, sir …’ Sweet touched Munro’s arm in a gesture of reassurance. Munro shrank away. He had a horror of men patting his shoulder or grasping his arm.

      ‘Whatever reason, Mr Sweet, forget it,’ he said coldly.

      ‘Take Cohen, forget Digby?’

      ‘Take Cohen, forget Digby, that’s the spirit.’

      Ashamed of his reaction to Sweet’s gesture, Munro leaned a little closer to him. ‘Perhaps your idea is to pile all the B Flight duds into one crew in order to get them reassessed as unsuitable for pathfinders and transferred. But why, Sweet, why in the name of God, choose Lambert’s crew? Lambert’s one of the best pilots on the Squadron.’

      Sweet smiled at Munro. He felt sure that he would be able to convincingly refute this unfair suggestion. ‘All I’m interested in, sir, is flying maximum ops with maximum bomb-loads and killing maximum Huns.’

      ‘Really?’ said Munro.

      ‘I just want to get the war over,’ said Sweet.

      ‘Quite a few of us feel like that,’ said Munro and before Sweet could reply added, ‘Another question, Sweet. Has Lambert had a portrait of Stalin painted on his aircraft?’

      ‘Stalin, sir?’

      ‘Stalin, that’s it.’

      ‘No sir, that’s Sergeant Carter’s aircraft: L Love.’

      ‘Umm, that’s what I thought. Group Captain came your way this PM to see the aircraft with the bomb-release malfunction. He saw the Comrade’s portrait on

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