Len Deighton 3-Book War Collection Volume 1: Bomber, XPD, Goodbye Mickey Mouse. Len Deighton
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.
Curiously shaped containers were packed with ninety 4-lb sticks of magnesium, each of which would burn with spluttering white flame and ignite almost anything it touched.
Because they were acting as a pathfinder squadron there were marker bombs too. They exploded with pretty colours: red, yellow and green, each colour denoting the authority and experience of the crew that dropped it. Few markers were prettier to see than the ‘Pink Pansies’: 4,000-lb medium-capacity bombcases stuffed full of benzol, rubber and phosphorus that ignited on impact with a great pink flash of fire easily spotted for miles.
Pretty and not so pretty bombs were winched slowly up into the bombers’ black bellies. Calculations had determined their positions in the bay and the fuse-setting control link had been adjusted so that a touch of the bomb aimer’s button could release the great weight without upsetting the aeroplane’s centre of gravity. The bombs’ fins had been straightened and their casings washed so that no patch of mud would spoil their balance as they dropped through the air.
The armourers worked carefully, remembering perhaps the accident at Scampton the previous March, when a 4,000-lb bomb – a cookie – fell out of a bomber during bombing up. It had exploded. The blast of it had completely destroyed six Lancasters and badly damaged five.
The first victim of the Krefeld raid died at 12.49 hours Double British Summer Time at B Flight, but it wasn’t due to carelessness. Tommy Carter’s aeroplane was the one involved. The