Bomber, p.10
Bomber, page 10
‘Ah! So that’s it,’ said Sweet. ‘It’s just because you think it’s a bad swop. Had it been Grimm, that duff wireless operator of yours, you wouldn’t have minded. Well, I don’t run my fights like that, my friend.’
‘Of course I would have minded. Jimmy Grimm is one of my crew. I don’t want any of them shuffled around like nuts and bolts. They rely on me to look after them. All of them.’
Sweet put his cigarette down and came round his desk. He put a consolatory arm around Lambert’s shoulder. ‘Now, now, Sambo, you’re upset. Don’t say something you might regret. I hate unpleasantness, any sort of unpleasantness. You know that.’
Yes, thought Lambert, providing you can get your own way without it.
‘Look, old chap,’ said Sweet. ‘The new arrangement won’t take effect until tomorrow. It’s not my idea, you have my word on that. Some bloody chairborne wonder in the Ops Block. Take it easy. We may all have gone for a Burton by tomorrow, eh?’ Sweet smiled in an effort to cheer Lambert up, but failed to do so.
‘If that’s all, sir, I’ll get started.’
‘Good show, Sambo.’ He squeezed Lambert’s arm affectionately. ‘Look, about this damned business, tomorrow I’ll get the CO in a corner of the Officers’ Mess and threaten that you and me will do a low-level attack on Air Ministry if he doesn’t let you keep your crew intact.’
‘I want to speak to him myself,’ said Lambert.
‘You’ve no idea what a blimp he is. Old buffers like him are a menace to all of us. It’s no good you even asking for an interview, you’ll just have to trust me. If I can’t squeeze it out of the old man when he’s got a couple of nips inside him after dinner, there’s no chance of you doing it in the cold light of dawn in the Squadron office.’ Sweet laughed reflectively, then he asked, ‘You’ve not reconsidered the cricket team? We’re playing Besteridge at the weekend. They’ve got a strong side.’
‘I’m committed next weekend, sir,’ said Lambert.
‘Pity. It might have made all the difference to the old man’s attitude.’
Lambert said nothing. Sweet said, ‘Think it over, Sambo; a couple of cricket victories – especially inter-Command victories – could put you well in with the old man. And with me.’ He smiled to show he was joking. ‘Not that I won’t do all I can for you anyway, you know that.’
There was a knock at the door. It was Flight Sergeant Micky Murphy, the engineer who had recently been transferred from Lambert’s to Sweet’s crew. He was a huge Irishman with a white complexion, a square protruding jaw and a gap-toothed smile that he used between sentences as regularly as he breathed. He glanced at Lambert and smiled.
‘Well,’ said Sweet. ‘Did you find the trouble with the under-carriage?’
‘That we didn’t find,’ said Murphy. ‘We’ve bled her out and she’s as nice as ninepence, but we found no fault unless it was the microswitch playing false.’
‘It wasn’t the switch,’ said Sweet.
‘Did you try the lever a few times?’ asked Murphy.
But Sweet threw the questioning back at his engineer. ‘Are you sure you switched the indicators over to their reserve, Paddy?’
‘First thing I did, sir.’
‘Call me Skipper, for God’s sake, Paddy,’ Sweet insisted. ‘It’s that hydraulic fluid; I told you I wanted only Intava 675.’
‘At this time of year it can make no difference,’ said Murphy. ‘I still think there was nothing wrong. All the undercarts stick sometimes. Lowering the lever a couple of times will often do the trick. No need for the emergency compressed air. It’s a big job once the compressed air is in the system.’
‘I’ll decide when there’s a need to use the compressed air, thank you, Chiefie. How soon will she be ready?’
‘She’s still on the jacks and the boys will be wanting to work the undercarriage a few more times to be on the safe side; it’s a fine test for the whole system. After that we reinflate the emergency air bottle, top up the reservoir, sign the 700 and off we go.’ Flight Sergeant Murphy smiled nervously.
‘For God’s sake stop grinning, Paddy,’ said Sweet. ‘S Sweet has got a date over Hunland tonight and I don’t intend to miss it, so get mobile. And this time don’t mix the hydraulic fluids when you top up.’
Murphy was about to explain what the handbook said about hydraulic fluids but finally nodded.
‘These engineers just want to blind us with science,’ said Sweet to Lambert after the man had left.
‘Yes, sir,’ said Lambert unenthusiastically.
‘That’s the spirit, Sambo, all any of us want is to make B Flight the best damned bomb-delivery service in East Anglia, eh?’
Lambert didn’t answer. Sweet gave Lambert an encouraging smile, for he didn’t want him to feel annoyed about losing men of his crew. It was Sweet’s especial pride that he was one of the most democratic officers on the camp. He might almost say the most democratic. It had become a standard joke now that at the Sergeants’ Mess dances Sweet would turn up wearing a sergeant’s uniform. Sometimes he could be persuaded to sing Tea for Two close to the microphone. The sergeants appreciated an officer who knew how to be one of the boys. It would need only one miserable bastard like Lambert to spoil the whole atmosphere.
Eric the clerk looked round the door. ‘Will you be wanting transport to the Officers’ Mess for lunch, sir?’
‘Affirmative,’ said Sweet. It was only a quarter of a mile by the short cut, but the path was always muddy. Last week he’d felt a perfect fool when some ass in the Mess had pointed to his shoes and said, ‘Been running B Flight through the assault course, Sweetie? Nothing like it for working up an appetite.’
Even Munro, the Squadron commander, had joined in the laughter. Good thing the Group Captain hadn’t been there at the time. The Groupie was a real old Sandhurst blimp: fussy as hell about officers’ appearance; no flying gear in the Mess, not even roll-neck sweaters, and him leading the officers in to meals like some old dowager duchess saying, ‘I’m employed to kill Huns,’ as though he’d actually seen one through a gunsight. Still, the buzz was that Munro was getting a station of his own. They might decide to give a flight lieutenant his scraper-ring and a chance at the job.
‘Righto, Sambo my lad, off you go on a night-flying test.’ And then, ‘Oh, by the by, Lambert.’
Lambert turned.
‘The armourers have removed a panel from your rear turret. You authorize that?’
‘I did.’
Lambert’s attitude made Sweet think that perhaps a higher authority had ordered it. He trod warily. ‘What’s the idea?’
‘To see better.’
‘Than through clear polished Perspex?’
‘You opened this window just now to see what I was doing.’
Sweet smiled.
Lambert said, ‘Anyway, the Perspex was badly marked, the Sergeant armourer was about to change it. I decided it was worth a go.’
Again Sweet smiled. ‘It’s just a matter of good manners, Flight. As your Flight commander it would be nice to be informed.’
‘Written memo. On your desk last Thursday. It came back signed, so we went ahead.’
‘Yes, quite. I meant keep me informed how it works out. A good idea of yours, Lambert.’
‘Sergeant Gordon’s idea, sir. If it works he deserves the credit.’
‘OK, Lambert. Off you go, and don’t forget the Christmas Party tin on your way out, laddie.’
Lambert, who was four years older and six inches taller than Sweet, saluted and left.
When Corporal Ruth Lambert had walked a little way along the road she overtook the Bedford lorry that Sweet had sent away. It was waiting for her.
‘Jump in, Mrs Lambert,’ said the driver.
‘Thanks,’ said Ruth.
‘Bloody officers,’ said the driver.
As the lorry passed near to where Creaking Door was parked, one of its engines started. Four birds, frightened by the noise, flew out of the hedge in front of the lorry. The driver braked in time for the birds to climb steeply into the sky.
‘Crows,’ said the driver. “Where I come from they say, “One for sorrow, two for mirth, three for a wedding, four for a birth”.’ He glanced at Ruth and grinned. ‘Four for a birth,’ he repeated.
‘Three of those were rooks,’ said Ruth.
‘Oh well,’ said the driver, ‘I don’t believe any of that stuff anyway.’
Other motors started, until the noise was shattering. Flight Sergeant Worthington waited for Lambert. They walked without speaking to the aeroplane. Flight Sergeant Worthington had been in the RAF twenty-eight years. His overalls were pressed and starched, and his tie was knotted tight against his collar. His face was red and highly polished and he could climb inside a greasy engine and emerge without a hair out of place. He regarded all airmen who had joined the RAF after war began as nothing better than amateurs. ‘Which war, laddie?’ The way in which aircrews were automatically given sergeant’s rank and membership of the Mess he saw as a terrible heresy. Some evenings when the weather was bad he’d sit at the bar, with pints of beer arriving automatically at his elbow, while he told his fellow men of his peacetime Odyssey to this Ithaca. He’d tell of Bloody April 1917, the rigours of the Khyber Pass, the boredom of Habbaniyah and the cruelties of Uxbridge depot. Whether or not he noticed that the young aircrew were the most dedicated part of his audience and kept the beer pots coming was not certain, but lately his tirades were more jocular than venomous.
Lambert had joined the Regular RAF in 1938. In Worthington’s eyes he was one of the few ‘real airmen’ on the camp.
It was January 1936 when Lambert became a part-time airman. He’d had great difficulty in getting six whole weeks off from his job in the garage, but the new manager thought it would be rather smart to boast of a qualified pilot on the staff and let him go, without pay, of course. Lambert went to an airfield in Scotland and was the first of the Volunteer Reserve sergeants to be trained under the new scheme. At the end of his course he had soloed and from then on every weekend, wet or fine, was devoted to training. He flew Hawker Harts and sometimes, as a special treat, a Fury. To be nearer the aeroplanes he got a job as an aero-engine fitter at the flying club that shared the field with the RAF reservists. Now and again the club would let him air test a light plane, or even instruct.
‘Take him up for a spot of dual, a few flick rolls and a loop. No spins and for the Lord’s sake don’t let the silly little bastard try a landing.’
‘Thanks, I’d like to do that.’
‘There’s no one else here, Lambert, and I can’t leave the office.’
In 1938 the RAF offered any VR pilot with more than two hundred and fifty flying hours a chance of six weeks with a Regular RAF squadron. Lambert volunteered immediately and after six weeks flying Hurricanes he joined the Regular Air Force. He was disappointed to be assigned to twins, especially when war broke out and his old VR squadron was given Hurricanes. However, twin-motor aircraft proved to be a new sort of complication and he liked the challenge. When after a tour on Wellingtons and a DFM he first got his hands on a Stirling his envy of fighter pilots disappeared never to return. The four-motor planes made him happy and if he had to be in the RAF in order to get hold of one of them then he would put up with it.
Worthington put his spectacles on and studied the snag book before looking at Creaking Door to compare it with the initials of the men who cared for it. For Worthington also felt possessive about these aeroplanes. As he saw it, the Air Ministry had wisely put this aeroplane into his good keeping. Without regarding the bomber as his own personal property he was a little disquieted when Lambert – and Lambert’s amateur crew – took it away overnight and subjected it to indignities and aerobatics and corkscrewing. Sometimes they brought it back damaged by chunks of enemy metal.
Worthington ushered Lambert through its entrance. Like a lecherous medico with a young girl, Worthington stroked and caressed each grip and bulkhead as they passed through the aeroplane. Her walkways and handholds gleamed like fine silver where so many other men had done the same. It was dark and confined in the slim belly, no wider anywhere than the smallest of today’s motor-cars. They had to crouch as they moved forward, but Worthington continued to speak. His voice was resonant and to punctuate his words he tapped with his knuckles and the metal sang a note of anxiety and affection like a nervous patient under the scrutiny of a specialist.
‘She’s a game old bitch, Sam,’ said Worthington, ‘but she’s not getting any younger.’ He allowed Lambert to fit himself into the narrow pilot’s seat and took a quick glance out of the window to be sure that his fitters were hard at work on the starboard inner engine.
‘That starboard generator was giving us half a volt this morning on the run-up. We found a wiring fault but I’m still suspicious of the genny. It’s reading high. Your engineer is going to watch the readings on the air test.’ Worthington allowed himself a smile. ‘I’ve given the poor kid a good drilling about it because the accumulators will explode if he lets a big overcharge build up: oxygen and hydrogen, see?’
‘Yes, I had heard, Worthy.’ Lambert touched the control column and rested his feet upon the rudder bar.
‘Yes, well, one of these days you’ll be glad I’m a bit of an old woman.’ He discovered a mark on the Perspex and cleaned it with his newly laundered white handkerchief.
‘Is that the only thing, the genny?’
‘Apart from that, she’s bang-on. The Squadron average oil consumption is 13.2 pints an hour. All of Creaking Door’s motors are better than that: 11.5, 12.8, 10.5, 12.4. A good bus. In fact, a bloody good bus.’
Worthington gave Lambert the snag book.
‘NFT right away, Chief. Could you ask the Sergeants’ Mess to save seven lunches?’
‘Meat pie,’ said Worthington, ‘or what they call a meat pie. Horrible stuff. Does Mr Sweet know what the target is?’
‘If he does, he’s not saying. With a full moon perhaps we’ll be gardening.’
Worthington shook his head. ‘Bombs, lots of high capacity, incendiaries galore; it’s a town. Target indicators too. We are on number two tanks: six hundred and fifty gallons of juice, at a gallon a mile. Plus ten per cent for stooging around … three hundred miles away?’
‘We can’t go far on these short summer nights,’ said Lambert, still avoiding the unavoidable.
‘The Ruhr,’ said Worthington.
‘Happy Valley,’ said Lambert dolefully. ‘That will cheer the boys up.’
‘If that bloody genny plays up bring her back. Don’t try to press on, OK?’
‘OK,’ said Lambert. He wondered if Worthington said things like that to give him an alibi for survival, for he wasn’t the sort of man to libel Door’s machinery gratuitously.
‘Spam,’ pronounced Worthington dolefully. ‘That’s what gives that meat pie a funny taste.’
They both looked across to Joe for King.
Lambert said, ‘It’s funny, Chief, the way they paint the number of raids the machine does. None of the bomb-scores on our aeroplanes coincides with the number of raids the crew has done, it’s just the number of raids the machine has done. It’s as though the plane goes to bomb Germany of its own predatory volition, as though it takes us along just for the ride.’
Worthington decided that it was a little flutter of nervousness. ‘Old planes are lucky planes, Sam.’
‘Sometimes I think it’s just the machines of Germany fighting the machines of Britain.’
Worthington looked at Lambert’s dark-rimmed eyes. ‘You’re not on the booze are you, son?’ he asked quietly. Lambert shook his head.
‘Sleeping all right?’
‘I wake up a lot,’ Lambert admitted. ‘I have a funny dream about a kid’s birthday party. He’s there with this cake and on it there’s half a dozen candles. When he goes to blow them out his head melts like wax. Funny dream, eh? I mean, considering I’ve got no kids.’
‘Seen the quack?’
‘He thinks the Air Force is divided into officers and malingerers. Can you imagine me reporting sick with a dream?’
‘Yes, he’s no help with my bunions either. Still, perhaps you won’t dream it again now you’ve told someone.’
‘It’s that bloody Mess food,’ said Lambert laughing, and wondered how Worthington knew that he’d never spoken of his dream before.
‘You don’t want to think about it all too much.’ Worthington changed the subject. ‘Not playing in the cricket match, Sam? I’d like to see some of those slow bowls again.’
‘I’m taking the missus up to London.’
Worthington self-consciously dabbed a finger of spittle at a corner of Perspex that the cleaning rag had missed. ‘They’ll keep on at you, Sam. I’ve seen it happen before. Why don’t you play a couple of games, get the bastards off your back?’
‘I ask myself that every day, Chiefie.’
Worthington finished his tiny cleaning task and looked at Lambert. ‘It’s the sensible thing, son. You can’t fight the Luftwaffe and the RAF too. It’s the sensible way, the comfortable way, the logical way.’
‘That must be the reason, then,’ said Lambert. Worthington looked at his friend. He’d had too much: too much combat, lost too many pals, took too much responsibility for his crew. Lambert had had it, Worthington decided. He’d seen them go like this before. He shook his head sadly and changed the subject. ‘Great God, look at all this stuff.’
All round Warley Fen airfield the Squadron’s Lancasters were being bombed up. Girl tractor drivers backed the bombtrains under the open bomb-doors. The dark-green bombs came in all shapes and sizes although most were 500-lb general-purpose or 500-lb medium-capacity bombs: heavy steel cases with relatively small explosive charges inside them. They were the most widely used, and most notoriously ineffective, bombs the RAF dropped. For every ten successfully delivered by Bomber Command six failed to explode.
When the war began Bomber Command’s missiles were small and its instruction books advised using a 40-lb GP against a house (only if occupied by troops, of course). For a fuel plant a 250-lb GP was recommended. The ineffectiveness of the old bombs and the new style of war demanded simpler weapons. Huge 8,000-lb canisters – little more than steel dustbins – without nose or tail fin were crammed full of explosive and named high-capacity bombs. They were designed for use against housing and just one of them could destroy a street.
