The Dam Busters

^{CHAPTER XII} GALLANT FAILURE

IN Italy the Allies were preparing to break out from Anzio and the Germans were preparing to stop them. Trains carrying 15,000 tons of supplies a day were passing over the Antheor Viaduct, and for the third time 617 was ordered to smash it.

Cochrane thought a 12,000-lb. “blockbuster” within 10 yards of the viaduct might knock a span down but this time he warned Cheshire that he must not try “deck-level” marking unless it were absolutely necessary. There were twelve heavy guns and several lighter guns around the viaduct, plus searchlights.

They found the bay at midnight but it was so dark they could not see the viaduct from above 3,000 feet, and as soon as Cheshire and Martin slipped down to that height the flak opened up terrifyingly, nearly twenty guns predicting and concentrating on the two of them. Cheshire made a run to drop his markers, but the searchlights caught him long before he was in position and shells were bursting all round him, so that he had to turn away. Martin tried a run but the same thing happened. Cheshire came in again and jagged lumps of flak ripped holes in his wings and fuselage. He slid out to sea and swung in again, but as he straightened up for the run Martin’s voice sounded in his earphones: “Hold off a minute. Leader. I think I’m in position for a low run. I can see everything.”

He had dived over the hills inland, was hugging the ridges so that the flak could not see him against the dark mass, and turning down the long ravine that cut down to the viaduct across the bay. When they had looked at the maps at briefing it did not seem possible that an aircraft could get down that way but Martin, who could land a Lancaster out of a steep turn, had his nose dipping into the ravine and could see the viaduct dead ahead, limned against the phosphorescence of the surf on the beach.

Cheshire called back, “O.K. Mick, go ahead.”

“Try and draw the flak as long as you can,” Martin said. He was deep into the ravine; the viaduct was about a mile in front and some 1,500 feet lower; he throttled his engines back to keep the sound from the guns and at 230 m.p.h. opened his bomb doors and knew he was making the best bombing run he ever had. The guns down by the viaduct were all firing, but their target was Cheshire weaving in towards them from the other side at 4,000 feet.

In the nose of “P Popsie” Bob Hay said over the intercom., “Target markers selected and fused.”

“Right,” said Martin. “I’m going to level out in the last second.”

“O.K.” The bomb sight was no use in a dive. Hay relied on Martin for the signal.

The ravine ridges were towering on each side and the viaduct was rushing at them, growing hugely. One gun on the eastern end suddenly swung and out of its muzzle-flashes a chain of shells was swirling at them. Hay called, “Now?” and Martin yelled, “No! No! “He eased the nose up, a second dragged into eternity, he shouted, “Now! “And as he shouted a shell smashed through the nose and exploded in the ammunition trays under the front turret. The aircraft rocked in the crashing din and jagged steel and exploding bullets shot back into the fuselage, hitting flesh and ploughing through hydraulic and pneumatic pipes, control rods and fuse boxes.

Hay must have pressed the button as the bomb release contacts parted, and then they shot a bare couple of feet over the viaduct and dipped towards the water as half a dozen more guns swivelled and spat at them. Foxlee was still alive; for the first time in months he was in the mid-upper turret instead of the nose, and now he was cursing and shooting back, and so was Simpson in the rear. Martin pulled the nose off the water and Whittaker rammed the throttles forward but there was almost no response from the engines.

“P Popsie” was bathed in glare but Simpson and Foxlee put three of the searchlights out with long bursts. They were practically in the water now, and in the glow of the last light Simpson saw the spray hissing up from the prop-wash and thought for a moment it was smoke from a burning engine. Then they were out of range and Martin lifted “P Popsie” a few feet off the water, praying with thankfulness as he found she still had flying speed.

Whittaker leaned over and yelled in his ear, “Port inner and starb’d outer throttles gone and pitch controls for the other two gone.” That meant two engines would stay throttled back as they had been for the run down the ravine, and the other two, in fully fine pitch, were straining themselves at maximum revs, on extreme power to keep the aircraft flying.

Martin had felt a sting in his leg as the shell went off and knew he had been hit. He ignored it and began calling the roll round his crew. The tough little Foxlee was all right. Bob Hay did not answer. Whittaker gave him a twisted grin, swearing and hunched, holding his legs. The rest were all right. He called Hay twice more but there was only silence, so he said, “Toby, see if Bob’s all right. His intercom, must be busted.” Foxlee swung out of his turret and wormed down towards the nose. He lifted his head towards Martin. “He’s lying on the floor. Not moving.”

Over the viaduct Cheshire was trying to drop his markers but again was coned by searchlights and hit by flak, so he had to stand the Lancaster on a wing-tip and pull her round. He came in. again about 3,000 but again he was battered and had to pull away. He climbed to 5,000 but the flak caught him once more.

On Ms sixth run he dived to upset the predicted flak and was able to drop flares that lit the viaduct. He turned back for another run and this time the searchlights did not find him. The guns predicted on him but he threaded through them and soon his markers sprang to glowing life as they hit; he saw in the light of the flares that they were on the beach about a hundred yards from the viaduct.

He swung in again with his last two markers, but four seconds short of release point two shells hit “Q Queenie” and she almost stood on her head in the blast. It threw Astbury off his bombing aim, but Cheshire got her back under control and found she would still fly and there was no fire.

The squadron headed in, unable at 10,000 feet to pick up the viaduct from the flares but trying to allow for the error of the markers. One 12,000-pounder went off brilliantly 15 yards from the side of the viaduct, but that was 5 yards too far and the viaduct shook but was not damaged beyond chipping from fragments. Six more exploded a few yards further on and pitted the great stone piers a little more. It was good bombing, but not quite good enough.

Whittaker had taken his tie off and wrapped it round his thigh as a tourniquet. There were a dozen pieces of flak in his legs but the pain was passing into numbness now. He grabbed one of the roof longerons, pulled himself up and found he could stand. Foxlee stuck his head up from the nose and said, “Bob’s unconcious. Get a first-aid kit, will you ? “Whittaker pulled one of the little canvas bags out of its stowage and eased himself down into the nose. Hay was lying on his side, his head pillowed on the perspex right up in the nose. “Give him some morphia,” Foxlee shouted, and Whittaker nodded, undipped the canvas pack and took out one of the tiny morphia hypodermic tubes. Foxlee unzipped Hay’s Irvin jacket sleeve and rolled the battledress sleeve up till Whittaker could see the soft flesh of the forearm, pale in the gloom. He felt the flesh was still warm, jabbed in the needle and squeezed till the tube was empty.

“Let’s get him over and see where he’s hit,” he shouted. Together in the cramped space they edged him over on to his back and Whittaker crawled up and gently turned the head over. He saw the great hole in the side of the head and felt the stickiness in the same moment. He said, “Oh, my God!” and felt he was going to be sick, looked up at Foxlee, but Foxlee was looking down. He had lifted his hand off Hay’s chest and the blood showed darkly on his fingers. “He’s got it in the chest,” he said, and Whittaker said, “Yes, the poor devil’s had it.”

He crawled back up into the cockpit to his seat beside Martin, leaned over and said, “Bob’s dead.” Martin looked at him a moment, then looked ahead again and gave a little nod.

Whittaker noticed Kenny Stott, the new navigator, standing by Martin’s seat. “Where’re we going?” Whittaker said, and Martin gave him a wry little grin. “Somewhere friendly, I hope,” he said. “Just been talking it over with Kenny. Got any ideas?”

“Whatever’s nearest. How ‘bout Gib? Or Sicily? Or North Africa?”

Scott said, “What about Sardinia? Or Corsica? Aren’t they closer?”

“Is Corsica ours?” Martin asked, and Whittaker cut in, not sensing then the unconscious humour of it: “Yeah. I saw we got Corsica in the News of the World last Sunday.”

“O.K. Fair enough. Kenny, give me a course for North Corsica.”

Stott went back to his charts and Whittaker said he would try and assess the damage. Martin found “Popsie” had just enough, power to claim a little more height, very slowly, so he edged the nose up a little, and soggily, not far from stalling speed, the Lancaster started climbing laboriously. In the darkness she was full of noise, the high-pitched screaming of the two good engines battering at the ears in waves because they would not synchronise properly.

He felt his right foot in the flying boot was wet and remembered he had been hit in the calf. He had enough sense not to strip his leg to investigate because the trouser leg and high flying boot would help staunch the blood. The trouble was, if he lost too much blood, he would pass out and they would all die because no one else could fly “Popsie”, particularly the way she was. Against the ragged thrust of the engines the trim would not hold her either straight or level and he was working all the time to keep her flying. With one hand he pulled his tie loose and wrapped it round the calf over the spot where the shrapnel had hit him, knotting it tightly so that it would press the trouser leg against the wound with the eifect of half bandage, half tourniquet.

Whittaker came back. “Not too good,” he said. “The floor’s all smothered in grease. It’s from the hydraulics, so you can count them out. Air pressure’s gone too.”

“I know,” Martin said. “I can’t get the bomb doors up.”

“The CO₂ bottle seems all right,” Whittaker said, “so you’ll probably be able to get your undercart and flaps down but you won’t have any brakes to pull up with.”

“Oh!”

“I’ve kept the best bit to the last,” Whittaker said morbidly. “The bomb release fuses have gone for a Burton and we’ve still got the bombs on board.”

“I thought so. That’s why she’s flying like a brick.”

Stott came up with a course for Corsica, and Martin swung on to the new heading. They were about 2,000 feet now.

“We’ll have to get rid of the bombs,” Stott said. “The fusing circuit’s bashed in too, so they must still be fused. We can’t unfuse ‘em. If you can get high enough I might be able to prod the grips through the floor with a ruler and trip them.”

Martin was trying to coax more height out of the stricken plane. He had a 4,000-pounder and several 1,000-pounders in the bomb bays, and the minimum safety height for dropping a 4,000-pounder was 4,000 feet.

Curtis was tapping out a “Mayday” (S.O.S.) and excitedly reported, after a while, he had made contact with Ajaccio in Corsica. An advanced R.A.F. fighter unit had just moved in there and the airfield and flarepath were serviceable.

Foxlee came up from the nose and said in a puzzled voice, “Bob’s still warm. His body’s quite warm. I think he might be alive.” Whittaker went down to investigate and came back up again, a little excited. “He is warm,” he said. “He must be alive still.” Martin told Curtis to warn Ajaccio to have a doctor meet them. Curtis made contact again and came back to the cockpit. “They say they haven’t got a doctor with any facilities to look after a bad head wound. They say if the kite’ll hold together we ought to make for Cagliari. That’s in South Sardinia. There’s an American bomber base at Elmas Field there, and they’ve got everything, but it’s another hundred and fifty miles.”

Martin said feelingly, “What a party! Give me a new course, Kenny.” The aircraft was still full of numbing noise; a gale was howling through the shell-hole in the nose and the two good engines still screamed in high pitch. Whittaker was watching his gauges nervously, waiting for the engines to crack under the strain.

They were about 2,700 feet when the stars blotted out and they were in heavy rain, followed soon after by hail. Water was sweeping in through the nose, and then darkness swallowed them as they ran into heavy cloud. It was ice cloud. Martin saw supercooled water droplets filming over the leading edge of the wings, forming the dangerous glazed ice that altered the aerodynamic shape and robbed the wings of lift. He had no spare speed to give him lift, and then the propeller of one of the two good engines slipped right back into coarse pitch and could not be budged out of it. The revs, dropped down to about 1,800; the engine was still giving power but the propeller could not use it all. Martin felt the controls getting soggy; he held on to her, correcting the waffling with great coarse movements, trying to coax her to stay up because Stott was shoving a ruler down through the floor into the bomb bay against the bomb grips. He got a 1,000-pounder away and then the aircraft stalled. Martin couldn’t hold her; the nose fell, she squashed down and the starboard wing-tip dropped and they were diving and turning, on the verge of a spin. He had hard left rudder on and the rudder caught her, the spin checked and she was diving, picking up speed. He eased her out but they were down to 1,800 feet. That was clear of the cloud, and soon the thin ice cracked and flicked off the wings. He started climbing again. They still needed 4,000 feet to drop the 4,000-pounder.

It took a long time. At 2,500 feet they were in the ice-cloud again, but Stott prodded two more 1,000-pounders free before the ice started to make “Popsie” soggy again, and this time Martin eased her down out of the cloud before she stalled. He started climbing again and found they were running clear of the worst of the cloud. It was still there, but higher and thinner, and only the barest film of ice seemed to be shining on the wings. “Popsie” slowly gained height, passed the 3,000 mark, but then progress was terribly slow and when at last they reached 3,200 she could not drag herself any higher. She was still at the climbing angle but moving no higher, like an old man trying to climb a fence and not being able to pull himself up.

“She’s only squashing along,” Martin said. “Can’t make the safety height, Kenny. What’re our chances if we drop the big one here?”

“Better than trying to land with the thing,” Stott said. “Let’s give it a go.”

He went back to the winch slits in the floor and probed. Martin felt the aircraft jump weakly in the same moment that Stott yelled, “She’s gone!” Martin tried to turn away but knew he could not get far enough for safety. The 4,000-pounder took fourteen seconds to fall and it felt like fourteen minutes. The sea below and a little to one side opened up like a crimson rose and almost in the same moment the shock wave hit the aircraft. She jumped like a startled horse and a wing flicked, but Martin caught her smartly with rudder and they were all right.

Curtis came up a couple of minutes later. “Elmas Field says the best way in is over the mountains in the middle of Sardinia.”

“How high are they?” Martin asked. Stott said they were 8,000 feet: and Martin showed his teeth sardonically.

They got a landfall on Sardinia about 3.30 a.m. and turned to follow the coast all the way round the south tip, and on e.t.a. Martin let down through light cloud and they came out about 1,000 feet and saw the flarepath.

“Thank God for that,” he breathed, and a minute later changed his mind. Elmas was on a narrow spit of land. It had one runway only, a dangerously short one for an emergency landing. Martin steered low over it to see what the overshoot areas were like because they were probably going to need them, and felt a chill as he saw that some genius of an airfield designer had had the fabulous idea of building the runway across the spit of land, so that the runway started very abruptly at the beach and stopped just as abruptly and dismayingly quickly at the cliff, where the sea started again. No overshoot.

He still had two 1,000-lb. bombs that Stott could not reach and they were almost certainly fused, so a belly landing was out of the question. With the emergency CO₂ bottle the undercarriage might go down, or it might not; the tyres might be all right or they might have been punctured, and if they were the aircraft stood a good chance of ground-looping so that the under-cart would collapse on to the fused bombs. If his first approach was not perfect the aircraft, without brakes, would certainly run over the far cliff. There was not enough power to go round for a second approach.

Whittaker yanked down the handle of the CO₂ bottle, and the undercart swung down and seemed to lock. In the gloom they could not see the tyres. There was just enough pressure left to get some flap down. Martin headed in on a long, low approach, dragging in from miles back, while the crew snugged down at emergency stations. Coming up to the runway he was dangerously low, deliberately, and in the last moment he cut all engines and pulled up the nose to clear the dunes. The speed fell and at about 85 m.p.h. she squashed on the runway about 30 yards from the end, not even bouncing. The undercart held, and as she rumbled on Martin started fish-tailing his rudders. The far cliff was running towards them and he pushed on full port rudder. “Popsie” swung and jolted over the grass verge, slowing more appreciably She started to slew, tyres skidding just short of a ground-loop, and came to a halt 50 yards from the cliff-top.

An ambulance and fire truck had been chasing them along the runway, and a young doctor swung up into the fuselage and they directed him up to the nose. He was out a minute later and said, “I’m sorry, but your buddy’s gone. He was dead as soon as it happened.”

He went over to Whittaker, lying on the grass, and cut his trouser legs away, exposing the legs messy with blood and torn flesh, and where there was no blood they had a distinct blue tinge. He worked for quarter of an hour on them, dabbing, cleaning and bandaging, while Martin gingerly pulled up his own trouser leg to inspect the damage to himself. The doctor finished bandaging Whittaker and as they loaded him into the ambulance told him, “That’s a close call, boy. You nearly lost a leg.” He turned to Martin. “Now let’s have a look at you,” but Martin said as off-handedly as he could, “Don’t bother about me, Doc. I’m quite all right.”

When he had uncovered his leg he had found one tiny spot of blood on a tiny puncture where a tiny piece of flak, at its last gasp, had just managed to break the skin. It had stung at the time, and imagination had done the rest. The wetness he had felt round his foot was not blood gushing into his flying boot but sweat!

About the same time the rest of the squadron was landing at home (except for Suggitt, who never made it back). Cheshire was lucky. The “erks” found 150 holes in his aircraft.

They buried Bob Hay in Sardinia. Whittaker stayed in hospital while the rest made rough repairs, flew “Popsie” on to Blida, where R.A.F. “erks” did a thorough overhaul, and then flew back to Woodhall Spa, where Cheshire met them with the news that Cochrane had vetoed any more operations for them. “It’s no use arguing, Mick,” Cheshire said. “He means it. He says you’ll only kill yourself if he lets you go on.” Martin did argue, but Cochrane posted him to 100 Group Headquarters, where he immediately wangled himself on to a Mosquito night-fighter squadron doing “intruder” work over Germany.

I have a letter which Cheshire wrote to a friend some four years after this, talking about the old days. He said: “The backbone of the squadron was Martin, Munro, McCarthy and Shannon, and of these by far the greatest was Martin. He was not a man to worry about administration then (though I think he is now), but as an operational pilot I consider him greater than Gibson, and indeed the greatest that the Air Force ever produced. I have seen him do things that I, for one, would never have looked at.”

It is not a bad tribute from a man who has himself often been labelled one of the world’s greatest bomber pilots.