TAKING BOMBS TO BERLIN

Evening Post, Volume CXXXI, Issue 121, 24 May 1941, Page 8

TAKING BOMBS TO BERLIN

NEW ZEALAND AIRMAN'S STORY

This copyright account of a Royal Air Force raid on Berlin is written by lan Reid, a former Auckland journalist, now captain of a New Zealand Bomber Squadron.

LONDON, May 7. Everybody was restless, but nobody seemed excited, last time the squadron was briefed to bomb Berlin. In the crew room beforehand I had a dry, sticky tongue and a vacuum for a stomach. I had not been to "the Big City" before, but no operational squadron lacks veterans willing to talk. The air to ground radio telephone was chattering and muttering in the corner. ■- Crews were dragging on furlined suits, sweaters, ooots, parachute harnesses. The same stale wisecracks were flying. Three sad, foggy days of sitting on the heater pipes had dulled conversation. No excitement in the lorry load of pilots, navigators, wireless "ops," and gunners bound for the dispersal points. Scarcely a glance for the signal light winking from the giant shadow droning overhead in the dusk. The first machine was setting course for Germany, but nobody sensed the drama. Around the perimeter of the flying field the anti-aircraft defence sections vere taking post. The day was nearly dead. Jerry would be over. "HIT THE SWABS!" Our stumpy, bulldog-faced wireless operator crawled underneath to write 'Love from Sheffield" on the biggest bomb. Final engine tests were reassuring. Torchlights showed the face of the ground crew corporal in the escape hatch. "Cheerio. Sarge. Hit the swabs!" The aerodrome control pilot signalled permission to take off. We wheeled and plunged off down the flare paths, tail high to gain speed. Bomb and petrol loads were heavy. We staggered on; the ground, sagged slightly and then climbed ponderously in a slow circuit before turning coastward on the route Leading eastward to Berlin. The raid was on. The placid night was soothing. I began to feel a bit phlegmatic about it myself. Out over the coast, climbing slowly towards the full moon, which was etched in the darkening air like a child's crude crayon drawing. The engines surged and fell in their usual tuneless rumbling song . . . "Ruhr Valley. Ruhr Valley, Ruhr Valley." Above, through the safety glass, an inverted royal blue bowl filled with stars. Outside, the propellers glinting whitely. Beside me, the captain, intent on the green phosphorescent figures of his instrument panels, only his calm eyes showing above the piglike snout of his oxygen mask. Behind, the dark tunnel of the fuselage, with faint lights showing at the navigation and wireless cubicles. Far-below, the moonlit North Sea road to the Dutch coast I went back amidships to the glass bulb of the astro hatch. Back over England somebody fired a flare which glowed redly and faded. FLAK AHEAD. The black, motionless dots which suddenly appeared below were the ships of a convoy. The swirling whiteness to leeward of them was the wake of a naval escort ship. The captain flashed our identification light. "They're pulling their weight," he said bripfly. The front gunner reported flak ahead. Though we seemed motionless in relation to the sea we were soon weaving through tin. searchlight batteries on the Dutch coast. The grouped beams came probing upward like monstrous antennae— poking, searching, sweeping, dropping. Quick reports from the gunner-: "Flares behind, sir.' "Flak starboard beam, sir." And the captain's mechanical "Thank you, thank you." "I've pinpointed myself on the coast, sir: alter course 12 degrees port," from the navigator. "Searchlight right on us, sir"—this from myself in the astro hatch. Again that polite "Thank you." We rocked and climbed slightly. BERLIN LAY BELOW. The questioning beam shot suddenly astern. Repeated warnings of searchlights and anti-aircraft fire came from the gunners as we left the coastal batteries. We crept steadily eastward past the defences of the strongly-protected industrial areas. Flak burst at varying heights to port and starboard. Eastward . . . deep into the guts of Germany. Two hours, three hours, four hilly ground passed underneath, snow-topped ridges, valleys, a railway i across a plain, lakes ... all clearly white in the moonlight. Another alteration of course. Berlin lay ahead. Those swivelling black stalks there in front were the front guns. The watchful gunner constantly rotated his turret. The night was a fighter's delight. We swung in across the suburbs with our desynchronised engines beating out of harmony in a dissonance of irritating sound. Stray searchlights poked up on our left. To starboard were serried rows of official looking buildings, packed like neat teeth. If the bomb aimers found their mark, there would be smashed and blackened stumps over there in the morning. In front was the motionless, moonlit heart of the city, traversed by a few stray searchlights. The navigator, now sprawled in the belly, compared the panorama unrolling below with his target map. He identified the Ticrgarten and the Unter den Linden, picked up the sheening surfaces of waterways leading towards the target. and directed us across the city. I saw a railway station below and tried to picture our stick of high explosives dropping across it, twisting the rails, cratermg the yards, shattering the buildings, and filling the neighbourhood with the terror I felt when staggered by bomb blasts one night in Leicester Square. "THE MOST TERRIFYING SHOW." Still no visible excitement. Only those recumbent blue searchlight beams and sporadic flak on the city's outskirts. So we dropped a Hare and sent the entire bomb load plummeting after it. Simultaneously the curtain rose on the most terrifying, exciting show of my life. The waiting searchlif 'o shot up unerringly and settledno desperate exploration, no wavering —slap on us! I saw dirty grey balloons flash past in the searchlights. I grabbed the captain's elbow and yelled a warning of the barrage into my microphone. He ignored me. I realised with a rush of perspiration that the "balloons" were giant flak bursts. Flak to right, left, behind, above, in front, below, bursting in swelling toadstool puffs at eye level alongside The smoke was diffused with the rusT of ou passage. No need for reports from the crew, for the shells were splitting close enough to keep the machine shuddering. "NIGHT FIGHTERS ABOVE."

The hitherto cloudless sky darkened with patchy smoke and we climbed desperately for its cover. Increasing spasms of flak sounded at intervals of three and four seconds, thumping dully li 1 a battery of suburban carpet beate" in action. We could smell the cordite.

The captain opened his supercharger and our heavy bomber clawed upwards like a fighter, paused, and plunged downwards. A staggering sideslip, another stall turn, and then the worst

sensation of all—engines completely cut out. This was evasive action with a desperate purpose—engines roaringly desynchronised, fine pitch, coarse. I tried to pray, but no words came; tried to guide us into gaps I could not see; tried to watch the gyrating compass; tried to stiffen buckling knees as we pirouetted on our tail and fell sideways. Blocked every way, we passed with dwindling hopes from cone to cone. As the front gunner pleaded for permission to fire into the beams, we saw the threatening shadows of. three aircraft pacing above us. "Night fighters! Open up if they come in," ordered the captain. '■Three more behind us," reported the rearguard. We dropped hundreds of feet in a dive and banked to port. The fighters came too —in perfect formation—and as the captain fought the bucking control wheel we realised that, like my "balloons," they were an illusion. The searchlights had cast our reflection on the overlying curtain of claud. We were fleeing from our own shadow. "I THOUGHT OF AN OPENING LINE." And as suddenly as it had begun we were plunging in comparative safety. Ten seconds before we were being passed across the city from cone to cone in an uplifting hail of shrapnel. Then we were unaccountably outside tlu lethal area. The engines, still desynchronised, gabbled "Ruhr Ruhr Valley, Ruhr Valley" in wild discord. The captain and I changed places. He slumped on the step, exhausted. By the navigator's clock we had been arly half an hour in the searchlights. We gulped coffee from the flasks. 1 thought vaguely, stupidly, of a ridiculous opening line for a story. "Last night, suspended on a pillar of air. in the searchlights 10,000 ft over Berlin. I sucked coffee from a ther- | mos. .. ." The rear gunner swore suddenly. The navigator and I joined in violently. Fragments of burning language from the relieved crew crackled over the inter-communication along the first part of the return slog. Then silence. Our ears blocked by the sudden changes of pressure, dulled the motors' roar to a thick hum. Only the rear gunner's spasmodic comments on the fire we had left behind in Berlin. He could see it from 100 miles away. Other machines on the same target had fanned it with incendiaries. Our machine seemed to fly itself, so I slumped in the seat. I felt sick. The oxygen tasted rank and sour. "AIRCRAFT ON OUR TAIL!" The taciturn rear gunner again: "Aircraft on our tail, pilot! Above us. A fighter, I think." The navigator jumped on to the astra hatch. "I see nothing," he reported. "You will." promised the gunner in a tired singsong. But the fighter had apparently stumbled on to our rear guns and was as willing as ourselves to be lost in darkness. He did not wheel in again. More lights. Flack bursting well away from us with rainbow vividness. Flaming onions, writhing upwards in . tenuous S-shaped bends like quick snakes—easy to dodge. Dancing will-o'-the-wisps on the ground, and then again that silver sea. That was the worst over. Descending slowly. Onward, westward to the English coast. More searchlights, a beach and overlapping terraces of waves. CRASH LANDING—TO SAFETY. Over the aerodrome we found the undercarriage smashed. Reassuring! voices from control. . . ."Yes, you will have to crash land. Go ahead, we are ready for you." Ready for us, that was a laugh. There were the hangars and the flare path. Where were the fire brigade and the blood wagon? Undercarriage jammed half-way down and the flaps unserviceable. Had to keep the right wing up somehow. We turned in, nose down . . . the fences, the pillbox, flares rushing past, braced up for the jolt—tearing, splintering noises, crunching skid and a smell of fresh furrowed earth ripped up in our path. Off with petrol and ignition. Funny silence, fresh air,, and then a voice from outside, "Come out and have a smoke, fellows. Why worry about a crash landing? It's the ones' you don't walk away from that matter!"