Wings (32 page)

These failures were glossed over in official reports and public enthusiasm remained high. But until he had more Lancasters and Halifaxes, Harris simply did not have the resources to maintain
operations on this scale, at this tempo. He was forced into the unwelcome step of having to lower expectations about what his command could achieve.

Inside the Air Ministry there were those who believed that while not immediately possible, precision bombing of vital German war industry targets was attainable. They were led by Group Captain
Syd Bufton, the Director of Bomber Operations. Bufton pressed Harris to concentrate on objectives where area bombing would have a definite effect. A favourite was Schweinfurt in Bavaria, where most
of Germany’s ball
bearings were thought to be made. His argument was backed up by data from the experts at the Ministry of Economic Warfare. Harris did not welcome the
intervention. He countered that the town was very difficult to locate. At any rate, he held ‘experts’ in low esteem and was highly suspicious of claims that destroying this or that
factory would significantly shorten the war, deriding them as ‘panacea targets’.

As far as he was concerned, area bombing was an end itself, and, if vigorously enough pursued, could lead to victory. The argument between Harris and the advocates of precision bombing would
rage until the end of the war, and, as the methodology of bombing became more and more accurate, his continued opposition became increasingly difficult to justify.

Bufton had another proposal which put him squarely in the path of Harris. Earlier in the war he had led Bomber Command’s 10 Squadron and pioneered a technique of using his best crews to
locate the target with flares, then to direct the others on to it by firing signal lights. He argued strongly for a small, elite spearhead that would guide the main force to the target area and
then drop markers to identify the aiming points. The idea of a Pathfinder Force was strenuously opposed by Harris, who complained that it would mean creaming off the best crews from his squadrons
and undermining their performance and morale. His doubts were shared by the bombing group commanders. Eventually, Portal stepped in to overrule Harris and in August 1942 one squadron was detached
from each of the command’s four heavy groups to operate from bases in Huntingdonshire and Cambridgeshire.

The operations they would lead were overwhelmingly area attacks. By the end of 1942 obliterating cities had become official policy, thanks to the advocacy of Portal and the
acquiescence of both politicians and the other service chiefs. With the Americans bringing their assets to the air war, he reckoned that a fleet of up to 6,000 heavy bombers could be amassed which
could blast 25 million Germans from their homes and kill 900,000 of them, fatally weakening Germany’s home defences before the land invasion was launched. That Portal could coolly present
such a proposal is proof of the brutalizing consequences of going to war with the Germans. Appalling choices were necessary to crush the evil of Nazism, and the critical judgements on Bomber
Command that followed in peacetime, delivered by those who had never had to endure the appalling ethical pressures of war, were arrogant and unjust. Few knew the reality better than Noble
Frankland, the Bomber Command navigator and historian of the campaign. In his words, ‘the great immorality open to us in 1940 and 1941 was to lose the war against Hitler’s Germany. To
have abandoned the only means of direct attack which we had at our disposal would have been a long step in that direction.’
¹

The crews were now caught up in a horrible process that inevitably resulted in the large-scale deaths of civilians. They, too, would experience their share of suffering. By the spring of 1943
all the elements for a full-scale assault against German cities were in place. Harris had a regular front-line strength of more than 600 new heavy bombers at his disposal and the numbers would keep
on growing.

He had his orders, delivered from the highest level. In January 1943 Winston Churchill and President Franklin D. Roosevelt met at Casablanca to plan the next stage of a war
that was now irrevocably going their way. The role of Bomber Command was spelled out in what became known as the Casablanca Directive, which informed Harris: ‘Your primary objective will be
the progressive destruction of the German military and economic system and the undermining of the morale of the German people to a point where their armed resistance is fatally weakened.’
Throughout spring and summer the crews would be hurled against the industrial conglomerations clustered between the Rhine and the Lippe, an area which became familiar to the British public through
countless progress reports, in the press and on the BBC, as the Ruhr.

Rapidly constructed bases sprang up on the flat fields of the eastern counties of England, and placid market towns filled with men and women in grey-blue serge. Bomberland started where East
Anglia juts out into the North Sea, reaching out towards the Low Countries and Germany, and stretched north to Lincolnshire and Yorkshire. The American journalist Martha Gellhorn, who visited a
bomber base to report for
Collier
’s magazine, found it ‘cold and dun-coloured. The land seems unused and almost not lived in.’

There was not much to divert your mind from contemplation of the operations that lay ahead or to celebrate your safe return. At the end of a mission, crews came back to a monochrome world of
muddy potato fields, Nissen huts with smoky
stoves, weak beer and dull food. The experience of the fighter pilots of 1940 was sometimes portrayed by them as something of an
idyll, and that the trauma of a day of dogfighting might be soothed way by evenings in old pubs nestling picturesquely in downland and weald. No Bomber Boy ever made this claim. Life on base was as
dank and unappetizing as a raw Lincolnshire spud, and letters home are full of yearning for decent food and drink. George Hull, arriving at the Heavy Conversion Unit at Wigsley near Newark in
Nottinghamshire in the autumn of 1943, wrote to his friend Joan Hull: ‘I seem to have fallen decidedly into the soup or what have you in being posted to this station. Even the name is
obnoxious. Wigsley, ugh! Pigsley would be more appropriate, yet I doubt that any pig would care to be associated with it. The camp is dispersed beyond reason. If I [didn’t have] a bike I
doubt if I could cope with the endless route marches that would otherwise be necessary. Messing is terrible, both for food and room to eat it. Normally we queue for half an hour before we can even
sit, waiting for it. Washing facilities are confined to a few dozen filthy bowls and two sets of showers an inch deep in mud and water.’
²

There was nowhere to escape to. The local towns were dreary, even by provincial standards. For the many airmen in Lincolnshire the choice was between the tearooms of the cathedral city or
Scunthorpe’s handful of dance halls, where hundreds of men competed for the favours of a handful of local girls. Drink provided a little solace and piss-ups in pubs or mess were frequent. Sex
was sometimes available,
from a variety of amateurs, professionals and lonely wives whose men were away at the war. No one wanted to die a virgin and descriptions of first
encounters make them sound more than usually like a job to be done rather than a sensual experience.

The bleakness of life was to some extent compensated for by the warmth of companionship. ‘Thank God for the crew,’ wrote George Hull from his dreary base. ‘A fierce bond has
sprung up between us . . . we sleep together, we shower together, and yes we even arrange to occupy adjacent bogs and sing each other into a state of satisfaction.’
³

They were fighting a very peculiar sort of war. They attacked an enemy they couldn’t see, night after night. Their targets were not soldiers or fellow aviators but buildings and those who
lived in or near them. There was no way of measuring success, no territory or strongpoint they could say they had captured, no enemy put to flight. The fights were brief. There was nothing
connecting them to the battlefield. They visited, then left.

‘Life on the squadron was seldom far from fantasy,’ wrote Don Charlwood, a thoughtful Australian navigator. ‘We might at eight, be in a chair beside a fire, but at ten in an
empty world above a floor of cloud. Or at eight walking . . . with a girl whose nearness denied all possibility of death.’
⁴

Even inside the bomber the airmen could feel disassociated from the lethal events they were engaged in. Reg Fayers, a navigator with 78 Squadron, described the feeling to his wife Phyllis in the
summer of 1943. ‘Lately in letters I’ve mentioned
that I’ve flown by night and that I’ve been tired by day, but I haven’t said that I can now
claim battle honours – Krefeld, Mülheim, Gelsenkirchen, Wuppertal and Cologne. I suppose I’ve been fighting in the Battle of the Ruhr. But it hasn’t felt like
that.’
⁵

‘Battles’ were how Harris chose to describe certain phases of the campaign. It was a misleadingly neat term for something that was repetitive, widespread and lacking a focused
objective. There was no measure of success. There was, however, a yardstick for failure – the ability of his force to soak up punishment, which, in the winter of 1943, the German defences
were efficiently meting out.

As had always been the case in the short history of aerial warfare, when one side developed a new technology or technique, the other was not long in countering it. So it was when Harris
unleashed his assault on German cities. German reactions sharpened. Around the big towns, searchlights and radar-directed batteries evolved systems that created a cauldron of fire that unnerved all
but the most self-contained or the least imaginative. It was a civilian, the BBC reporter Richard Dimbleby, who put into words the bowel-melting, yet awe-inspiring nature of the sight, when he
bravely flew to Berlin with Guy Gibson and 106 Squadron on the night of 16–17 January 1943. They took off from Syerston at tea time. ‘It was a big show as heavy bomber ops go,’ he
broadcast later. ‘It was also quite a long raid, as the Wing Commander who took me [Gibson] stayed over Berlin for half an hour. The flak was hot, but it has been hotter. For me it was a
pretty
hair-raising experience and I was glad when it was all over, though I wouldn’t have missed it for the world. But we must all remember that these men do it as a
regular routine job.’

The journey out had been trouble-free, but they ‘knew well enough’ how bad things could get when they were approaching Berlin. ‘There was a complete ring of powerful
searchlights, waving and crossing,’ he reported. ‘There was also intense flak. First of all they didn’t seem to be aiming at us. It was bursting away to starboard and away to port
in thick yellow clusters and dark, smoky puffs. As we turned in for our first run across the city it closed in right around us. For a moment it seemed impossible that we could miss it. And one
burst lifted us into the air, as if a giant hand had pushed up the belly of the machine. But we flew on, and just then another Lancaster dropped a load of incendiaries. And where a moment before
there had been a dark patch of the city, a dazzling silver pattern spread itself, a rectangle of brilliant lights, hundreds, thousands of them, winking and gleaming and lighting the outlines of the
city around them. As though this unloading had been a signal, score after score of fire bombs went down and all over the dark face of the German capital these great, incandescent flower beds spread
themselves . . . as I watched and tried to photograph the flares with a cine camera, I saw the pinpoints merge and the white glare turning to a dull, ugly red as the fires of bricks and mortar and
wood spread from the chemical flares.’

Dimbleby was very impressed by Gibson’s skill and coolness, which would be demonstrated brilliantly a few months
later when he led 617 Squadron on their dambusting
mission. The Dams Raid, however, was a spectacular side show, which did more for Allied morale than for the war effort. The real business of Bomber Command during 1943 and 1944 was
city-bashing.

The industrial nature of the campaign meant that by 1944 operations had settled down into a regular routine that was no less harrowing for its familiarity. After breakfast, aircrew would report
to their flight officers to learn whether or not ops were on that night. The decision lay in the hands of the group headquarters. During the winter of 1943–44 the campaign went on
relentlessly, night after night, interrupted only by the most extreme weather conditions. Details of the destination and the size of the force were telephoned through to the bases. Further
information on routes, bomb loads and the time of departure – H-hour – would follow later.

As yet, none of this was relayed to the crews, who simply busied themselves with preparations. Their first task was to drive out to the dispersal areas to check with the ground crews on the
serviceability of their aircraft, going over engines, instruments, radar and wireless. Later, the aircraft would be fuelled, armed and bombed-up. They returned to the base for lunch, officers and
NCOs heading off to their respective messes.

In the afternoon the briefings would begin. The crews gathered in a large briefing room filled with chairs. At one end was a platform and behind it a large map shielded from view by a blackout
curtain. A roll call was held, and when it
was confirmed that all crews were present the assembly got to its feet and the station, squadron and senior flight commanders walked
in to join the meteorological, intelligence, engineering and flying control officers already on the stage. The doors were shut behind them by an RAF policeman who stood guard outside.

The CO then rose and approached the large cloth-covered rectangle. He whisked the cloth away and declared. ‘Gentlemen, your target for tonight is . . .’ Hundreds of eyes took in the
red tape leading to their destination. An ‘easy’ target where the flak was light was greeted with relieved laughter. A tough one like Berlin, with groans and muttering. The briefing
then commenced, invariably stressing the importance of the target and the significance of the contribution the operation would make to the war effort. Peter Johnson, attending his first briefing
before his first op, was struck by the crews’ indifference to these exhortations. The intelligence officer was a WAAF, a ‘formidable lady who minced no words. The target, for the
umpteenth time, was the Krupp factory at Essen. ‘“Yes, they’ve been damaged!” she shouted over the chorus of groans and expletives. “But make no mistake, they’re
still turning out guns and shells aimed at you!”’ She went on to warn that the defences would be stronger than ever, and gave details of the known searchlight and flak battery
positions. ‘“They’re going to give you hell!” she spat. “See that you give it them back!’”