The Dam Busters

^{CHAPTER XVII} VICTORIA CROSS

617 was a delighted squadron; not because of the coming 10-ton bomb (they were not told about that yet) but because Leonard Cheshire had just been awarded the V.C. It was the second V.C. to the credit of the newest squadron in the R.A.F., and one of the most remarkable V.Cs. ever awarded.

The citation specified no one act of superb gallantry but listed some of the things he had done: the time a shell had burst inside his aircraft and he had continued on to the target, Ms volunteering for a second tour as soon as he had finished his first, his third tour, and then his insistence on dropping rank to do a fourth in a “suicide squadron”. There was a piece on his part in the Munich raid, when he cruised through the flak over the roof-tops, and it noted that he had done a hundred raids. A V.C. is often won in a moment of exalted heroism, but there can be no tougher way of winning it than by four years of persistent bravery.

617 had lost its priority targets now and Cochrane was busy finding new ones of sufficient importance and diminutiveness to merit the “tallboys” and 617’s specialist attention. Tait had been completely accepted by the squadron. An elite corps, they had regarded him a little aloofly (after Cheshire and Martin) until he had gone down to circle Wizernes in his Mustang; as a personal aiming point for the bombs as well as the flak; then they went so far as to chide him with fond concern for sticking his neck out so imprudently.

Wallis’s new 10-tonner was coming along as fast as possible, but that was not very fast because it was a far more complicated job, even, than the “tallboy”. Freeman had christened it with the code name of “Grand Slam” and delivery date for the first one was roughly February, 1945. Meantime the Americans were starting to produce “tallboys” and were evolving a new (and very efficient) method of making “grand slams”.

It might be said that the fate of the battleship was finally sealed in the bath of Air Vice-Marshal the Honourable Ralph Cochrane. In his waking moments work was rarely absent from his mind; he had been thinking of the Tirpitz for a long time, and it was in his bath one morning that he finally made up his mind to get permission for 617 to sink her. He climbed out, dried, dressed and flew down to see Harris, and Harris said yes.

Tirpitz was still in Alten Fiord, in the Arctic Circle, by the northern tip of Norway. Merely lying inside her girdle of torpedo nets she forced the Allies to divert three battleships, badly needed elsewhere, to guard the Russia convoys. The Allies had been trying to “get “her for over two years. First a Russian submarine damaged her; then British midget submarines put her out of action for six months. Next the Fleet Air Arm hit her, but now she was ready for sea again.

Cochrane flew to Woodhall. “Tait,” he said (typical of the man), “you’re going to sink the Tirpitz.” For a while they discussed ways and means. One problem, Cochrane warned, would be the smoke screen round the ship. The Germans had run a pipeline round the shores of the narrow fiord and could pour out smoke by turning a tap. Also there were scores of smoke pots round the ship, and they could smother the fiord under smoke in eight minutes. There would be no time to waste manoeuvring for a bomb run. Tait went over to the mess to have a glass of beer and think about it.

He spread maps on his office floor and measured the distance there and back. It was formidable: something like 3,000 miles… probably beyond range. He loaded three Lancasters with bombs and full petrol and sent off three of the youngest crews (because the maximum range is what the least experienced can do) to fly round England a distance equal to the distance to the target. He sent another plane with half petrol to fly similarly, representing the distance back with a lighter load. When they landed he measured the petrol they had used, and the two ends of the string did not meet. He reported to Cochrane that the Tirpitz was just outside their range.

Two days later Cochrane flew over and said, “You can do it from Russia.” He put a finger on the map…. “Here. Yagodnik.” Yagodnik was a Russian airfield on an island in the Dvina River, about twenty miles from Archangel… only 600 miles from Alten Fiord. “Fly to Yagodnik from northern Scotland with your bombs,” Cochrane said. “Refuel there, do the job, return to Yagodnik to refuel again and come home.”

He said there were enough “tallboys” now to send 9 Squadron with them. 9 Squadron could not use the S.A.B.S. but had become nearly as accurate with the Mark XIV bomb sight. Two Liberators would carry ground crews and spares.

The planners worked fast and three days later, on a good weather report, the squadron (carrying their “tallboys”) flew to Lossiemouth, refuelled and in bright sunshine on September 10 took off heavily on the long haul to Russia.

Rain poured on Yagodnik, and for three days they waited for it to lift. Friendly Russians tried hard to amuse them, but outside the huts lay a sea of mud and the crews relaxed indoors, chasing bugs and eating sour black bread, borscht and half-cooked bacon… when the last of the breakfasters rose the head of the lunch queue sat down.

On September 15 the sun crawled out of the horizon low to the south and shone in a clear sky. The crews were out in their aircraft, running up the engines hopefully, when the weather plane darted over the airfield like a blue kingfisher and landed with the report that the sky over Alten Fiord was clear. Minutes later twenty-eight Lancasters of the two squadrons were lifting off the bumpy grass and turning west. Tait flew slowly, the rest of his squadron picking up station behind till they were in their gaggle low over the White Sea, and on strict radio silence to delay detection. Grey water close below muffled the thunder of the engines till they crossed the barren shore of Lapland and the echoes came up from the ice-worn rocks. The land was lifeless but for odd stunted trees; it rose a little and the aircraft lifted their noses gently over the contours.

Tait had an engine running rough, shaking the plane like a rolling-mill, but he headed on worrying about having enough power for the bombing climb. Ninety miles from Alten Fiord the mountains reared ahead and, on full throttle and revs., Tait’s rough engine cleared and he climbed easily over the last ridge. They were dead on track.

Alten Fiord lay quietly in the sun like a map; they raced for it at 11,000 feet to beat the smoke screen, but as they picked out the black shape at her anchorage under the cliff, white plumes started vomiting out of the smoke pots and streaming across the water.

The bombers were quivering on full power five minutes from bombing point as the white veils started wreathing her. There must have been a hundred pots pouring smoke. Flak was firing from the heights now; the gaggle ran steadily through the black puffs, and then the Tirpitz’s guns opened up. Two minutes from release point the drifting veils were fast smothering her. Daniels, in the nose of Tait’s aircraft, took a long bead and called, “Bomb sight on!”

The black hull finally vanished in its shroud but the mast-tops stood clear a few seconds later, and then they too were gone. Daniels tried to hold his graticule on the spot but found no mark in the drifting smoke and guessed as the seconds dragged that he must be wandering off. The Lancaster leapt as the bomb clattered away and Tait swung the wheel hard over, swerving out of the flak.

Behind him the others had all lost their mark in that agonising last minute. Howard, Watts and Sanders bombed on dim gun flashes through the smoke. Kell and Knilans bombed on the spot last seen, and the others, in frustration, did not bomb at all. Pale flickers in the smoke showed bombs exploding, and after one of them a plume of black smoke spurted through the whiteness. Tait felt a moment of hope but judged it was only a “tallboy “striking the shore. Some of the Lancasters swung back through the flak for a second run, but the screen was thicker than ever and they turned for base.

It was the nearness to success that hurt Cochrane most. He said wryly, “Another minute’s sight and you’d have got her. I was afraid those smoke pots might balk you.” He did not tell Tait at the time but he had no intention of leaving the Tirpitz in peace.

Recce aircraft reported the Tirpitz was missing from Alten Fiord and there was a great “flap” (particularly among the nautical people) till a message came through from a Mr. Egil Lindberg. Lindberg was a Norwegian who operated a secret transmitter from a room above the morgue in Tromso. The Tirpitz had arrived in Tromso, he reported, with a great hole in her for’d deck. She had been hit by a very heavy bomb (Daniels’ “tallboy” had hit the ship. He was probably the most “hawk-eyed “bomb aimer of the war). Lindberg thought the Tirpitz had come to Tromso because the repair facilities were better there. Cochrane got the news and did not care a hoot about the repair facilities. The important thing to him was that Tromso was 200 miles south of Alten Fiord—it shortened the return trip by 400 miles… and that put the Tirpitz just within range of Lossiemouth.

A new consideration interrupted Cochrane’s Tirpitz plans. The right flank of the American dash across France into Germany had been halted at the Belfort Gap; ahead the Rhine barred the way into Germany, and on the Rhine by the Swiss frontier lay the Kembs Dam. It was obvious that when the Americans stormed the river the Germans would blow up the flood-gates, releasing a massive head of water that would sweep the assault forces to destruction in mid-river or isolate those who got across. There was only one way out—smash the floodgates first, let the water spend itself and then drive at the river.

Cochrane decided that a “tallboy” dropped low over the water just short of the flood-gates would slide cleanly into the water till it hit a gate and stick in the concrete. They would give it a delayed fuse so the low-flying bombers would not be blown up as well.

It would have to be done very accurately; that meant doing it in full daylight, and the dam was circled with guns. The bombers would have to fly very low, straight and level, and run the gauntlet. No question as to who should do it!

Cochrane planned it craftily. They would split in two formations; one would come in and bomb from the west at 8,000 feet, drawing the flak; and in the precise moment their bombs were hitting, six Lancasters would sneak in low from the east for the real assault. At the same instant a Mustang squadron would dive on the flak-pits with guns and rockets so the flak might not notice the low-level force, at least till the bombs were gone. It was going to need split-second timing, and 617 practised every day for a week till their final rehearsal over Wainfleet went perfectly. Tait was insisting on leading the low-level force.

They all took off into light haze and ran into a pall of cloud over Manston, where they were to meet the fighters. Tait called the fighter leader and told him they were overhead. It was clear over France. They skirted the Swiss frontier, slid past Basle on the right and turned down the river, opening bomb doors. Three miles ahead Tait saw flashes round the low parapet of the Kembs, but the guns were aiming high at Fawke’s formation. Great flashes and columns of spray rushed up round the dam; the timing of the high-force bombs was perfect. Tait’s aeroplane was rock-steady on course and no word was spoken, except once, a terse “O.K.” from Daniels. They were committed to it now, sliding over the smooth water with taut nerves and dry mouths. Tait saw Mustangs diving out of the sun over the dam and dared to hope the flak would not see him, but abruptly the white-hot balls came darting at them. He felt the plane jump as the bomb slid away, slammed the throttles on, did not see the bomb knife cleanly into the water 10 yards from the right-hand sluice-gate, but heard the vibrant rattle as the rear gunner opened up and they hurtled over the dam.

Behind him Castagnola’s plane lurched in Tait’s slipstream and threw the bomb wide. Tait hauled hard over to the right for the shelter of the hills, climbing on full power, engines blaring in fine pitch as they dragged her up. He turned abeam and saw a Lancaster rocking over the dam on fire, flame and smoke streaming in her wake. She dropped a wing and plunged into the river bank, rolling over in a ball of fire. When it is quick it is a good way to die.

Tait heard a voice in his earphones—Howard’s, he thought—saying, “Had a hang-up. Going round again.” Howard, of the noble family, was rather a formal boy, but brave. Perhaps foolhardy. This time the gunners were wary, not distracted. Howard came alone down the river and all the guns saw him. They got him a long way back and he blew up in mid-air with the bomb on board.

The surviving bombers turned for home; in five minutes the sound of their engines had died away and the dam lay quietly in the sun as though nothing had happened, except for the two columns of greasy smoke pouring from the spots where Howard and Wyness and their crews had died.

There had been half-hour delay fuses on the low-force “tallboys”. Twenty minutes after the raid a Mosquito droned high over the dam and circled it, the pilot watching till he saw the water beside the right-hand sluice-gate burst and mushroom into the air. A massive torrent plunged through the gate, and in twenty-four hours the banked headwaters of the Rhine had dropped so much that barges far into Switzerland grounded on the mud.

The next days were a fever of activity getting ready for the Tirpitz. With tests and graphs Tait worked it out that from Lossiemouth they could just reach the Tirpitz in Tromso with a bare—a very bare—safety margin in case of adverse winds.

In October and November a prevailing westerly blows continuous stratus cloud from the sea over Tromso… except for perhaps three days a month, when the wind briefly changes to the east and the sky is clear for a few hours. They would have to be in position at Lossiemouth to take off when one of these clear periods existed, and hope it would last till they got there. But neither Harris nor Cochrane could let them stay at Lossiemouth indefinitely “on spec”. They needed them down south in case of emergency targets. The only way was for the squadron to fly to Lossiemouth when a break seemed possible.

The word came on October 28, and thirty-six Lancasters of 617 and 9 Squadrons flew north to a bleak field near Lossiemouth. At midnight a Mosquito over Tromso radioed that the wind was veering to the east, and in drizzling rain, at the deathly hour of I a.m., the overburdened Lancasters took off.

They flew low as usual, in sight of the caps on the dark water; hours later crossed the Norwegian coast and turned inland towards Sweden to keep the mountains between them and the Tromso radar. They wheeled left in a long climb, topped the ridges and saw Tromso Fiord and the ship… and saw in the same moment, moving in from the sea, towering drifts of cloud. The wind had changed.

It was a race again, like those sickening moments over Alten Fiord, but this time the white screens were higher and thicker. At 230 m.p.h. the bombers charged towards the ship and the cloud. A minute from release point they still saw the ship, but with thirty seconds to go the cloud slid between them.

They couldn’t dive under it to bomb; lower down the “tallboys” would not have penetrated the armoured decks. Daniels tried to keep his bomb sight on the spot where he last saw the ship. Flak was bursting through the cloud among them now. Daniels called “Bomb gone!” and Tait dived into the cloud to try and see where it fell. Fawke, Iveson, Knights and one or two more bombed on vague glimpses and dived too. Others swung away to try another run. Through gaps in the cloud at about 13,000 feet Tait saw flashes as bombs exploded in the water round the ship. One or two others said they thought they saw a direct hit or near miss.

Carey’s Lancaster had been hit by flak on the first run; the starboard outer engine stopped and petrol streamed out of a riven tank, luckily without catching fire. He turned back on three engines for another run and the cloud foiled him. He tried again and again, ploughing steadfastly through the flak till, on the sixth run, an almost desperate bomb aimer let his “tallboy” go with faint hope.

Tait had ordered everyone to dive to 1,000 feet to pick up speed and steer for home. As Carey screamed down he passed over a small island: a single gun on it pumped a shell into another engine, which died instantly; petrol was streaming out of another burst tank (miraculously no fire again), and then the hydraulics burst and the bomb doors and undercarriage flopped down. The two good engines on full power just held her in the air against the drag; the engineer thumbed his gauges, scribbed a few calculations and said, “Sorry, Skip. Not enough gas to get home.”

From the rear turret came a protesting, grimly flippant voice: “This can’t happen to me.” Witherick was flying with Carey this time. He had a habit of switching crews.

“Can’t it?” said Carey. “You watch!”

He turned the winged plane towards the land and, staggering through the air a few hundred feet up, they threaded through a mountain pass and slowly crossed the barren country. Half an hour later the navigator said they were over Sweden. The two engines were dangerously hot and Carey crash-landed in a bog near Porjus. The Lancaster tilted frighteningly on her nose, poised a moment and settled back, and they climbed out.

The rest of the squadron landed at Lossiemouth and heard that a recce plane radioed that the Tirpitz was untouched. They flew down to Woodhall, where Tait found a message from Cochrane: “Congratulations on your splendid flight and perseverance. The luck won’t always favour the Tirpitz. One day you’ll get her.”