Bomber Boys. Patrick Bishop

layer of clouds, ‘so solid, so absolutely like a new earth that one wanted to step out on them and walk,’ to have any chance of finding the target. By the time the Wellington emerged only 2,000 feet were showing on the altimeter. Ahead they could see parachute flares, and artillery flashes lit up the target area. Bert Faltham, the navigator-cum-bomb-aimer now took charge. As he led them in the flak increased in intensity until ‘the sky around and ahead was a vast, twinkling maelstrom of light.’ At last Faltham called out, ‘Bombs gone Skip!’ and the Wellington’s 3,500-pound load fell away. Dobson climbed, taking ‘what seemed like a leaden century’ to reach 18,000 feet where he levelled off.

      About an hour and a half from home Dobson allowed himself to start thinking that they might just make it. Then the sky ahead reddened with a flak barrage which flared up and died away before he could identify its location. Suddenly there was ‘a terrific crack, like a whip going hard against naked flesh, whilst a gale roared through the hole the flak had created … a nucleus of bursts held us in their thrall, smashing into the fuselage at every point, tearing huge gaps …’ For the next forty-five minutes Dobson fought to keep the aircraft steady but it started to slide into what seemed like a final descent. He gave the order to bale out. ‘One by one the crew filed past my seat and dropped through the opening at my feet. When the last one … had vanished I trimmed Kate, tail heavy, so that in a few moments her nose would come up and she would spin in to her complete destruction. Then, still holding the stick, I slid from my seat and as the aircraft swayed slowly backwards I fell forward through the hole in the manner approved. The time was 05.00 … Height 1,500 feet.’¹²

      Such was the end of K-Kate, one of thirty-seven aircraft lost that night. Peirse’s determination to restore his and his command’s reputation had brought disaster. Two months later he was removed. The Berlin calamity prompted the War Cabinet to put an end to big raids for the rest of the winter to preserve lives and aircraft and allow the new policy to take shape. In the coming months only limited operations with small numbers of aircraft were sanctioned. It was to be another fourteen months before Berlin was attacked again.

       6 Enter ‘Butch’

      Though it might not have appeared so to despondent crews that winter, Bomber Command’s overall prospects were slowly improving. The Bomber Boys rarely caught a glimpse of the big picture. But during the second half of 1941 the wider war had taken on a new and encouraging direction. The German invasion of Russia in June had transformed the Soviet Union from an enemy to an ally. With the entry of the United States into the conflict after the 7 December attack on Pearl Harbor, all the riches of America were unlocked for use in the fight against the Nazis.

      The pause in major operations ordered after the Berlin disaster gave an exhausted, depleted and dispirited force the chance to catch its breath and gather its strength. Over the months that followed the recent volunteers started to arrive in force at their operational squadrons. The first of the new generation of four-engined heavies, the Stirlings and Halifaxes, began to replace their two-engined predecessors. On Christmas Eve, 1941, the first of the Lancasters landed at RAF Waddington in Lincolnshire. Soon its blunt, menacing lines would be seen everywhere. Some of the new aircraft carried desperately-needed new electronic navigation aids. By the time Harris took over Bomber Command at the end of February 1942 the force was approaching a position where it could start applying the policies on which those running the war were now agreed.

      Shortly before his arrival there was an event which gave heart to the battered squadrons. One day in early March 1942, Peter Johnson visited a bomber station in Nottinghamshire to have lunch with the base commander. Entering the mess he found a group of young officers in the middle of a raucous party. His host explained they were celebrating a ‘wizard prang’ the night before. ‘Come and look at the photos,’ he said. ‘They’re the best ever. Teach those bloody Frogs to play along with the Boche.’