FOUR O'CLOCK, ON FRIDAY, 17 April 1942. A clear, pleasant spring afternoon of bright blue sky, high, wispy cloud, and just a slight haze. Approaching Cherbourg, on the Cotentin peninsula of Normandy, were twelve twin-engine Boston medium bombers, flying at around 12,000 feet. High above them, flying a protective top cover, were a group of three squadrons of fighters – some thirty-six in all.
At one minute past four, as the dry docks of the French port appeared, and with their bomb bays already open, the Bostons each dropped four 500-pound bombs.
German radar had, however, already picked up the raid as it had crossed the Channel, and immediately some eighteen Messerschmitt 109 single-engine fighters had been scrambled from Jagdgeschwader 2, the 'Richthofen Wing', based near Le Havre, further along the Normandy coast. No sooner were the bombs whistling down towards the port than Me 109s reached Cherbourg and were diving upon them. As the bombs exploded below, vast clouds of dust and grit and debris spiralling into the sky, the air had become a mêlée of aircraft, the bombers frantically turning for home and taking what evasive action they could while the Spitfires above dived down upon the German fighters in turn. Machine-gun and cannon tracer streaked across the sky, then suddenly one of the Bostons, both engines aflame, was screaming downwards, a long trail of dark smoke following in its wake, but then so too was a Messerschmitt, and then another. White contrails streaked the deep blue afternoon sky, wisping smoke gradually dispersed, and another Messerschmitt seemed to be in trouble and plunging out of the fray, more smoke following in its wake. The remaining eleven Bostons, however, were now back out over the Channel, heading for home, those that had been clattered by bullets nursing their wounds, while the Spitfires chased off the remaining German fighters.
Just eleven minutes later, around 150 miles further east, another twelve Bostons were attacking two targets at Rouen, six bombing the shipyard and half a dozen more hitting the power station at Le Grand Quevilly to the south-east of the city. Again, the raid had been picked up by German radar and, this time, more than thirty Focke-Wulf 190s and Me 109s from Jagdgeschwader 2 and 26 had been scrambled from their bases at Beaumont le Roger to the south and Abbeville to the north. Fifteen of these had already been spotted by the second fighter group of escorting Spitfires and had been warned off.
Bombs crashed down on Rouen as light flak pumped upwards. More dust and smoke billowed into the air and then a fuel tank at the shipyard was hit and exploded in a burst of angry flame and thick black smoke. With the German fighters keeping out of the fray, the Bostons closed their bomb bays and headed for home, a further seventy-two Spitfires from RAF Fighter Command's 11 Group patrolling the Channel and protecting the skies as the bombers droned out over the sea. The attacks together had lasted just fifteen minutes.
As the Bostons were turning for home, seven Lancaster bombers from 44 Squadron were approaching Selsey Bill, a promontory east of Portsmouth on the south coast of England, en route to Augsburg, deep in Bavaria in southern Germany. With the Isle of Wight stretching away to their right, the seventh Lancaster, the reserve, left the formation and turned for home, no doubt with a mixed sense of relief and disappointment; amidst the fear and apprehension was a sense of pride and excitement among most of the crews that they should be part of such a special and important operation. The chosen six flew on, leaving England behind and dropping low over the Channel.
The four-engine Lancasters were new to RAF Bomber Command; 44 Squadron had been the first to receive the new much-vaunted heavy bomber, the initial three arriving on Christmas Eve the previous year.
The squadron was known as 'Rhodesia' because at least a quarter of its personnel were from the African state, and it was no coincidence that, before the First World War, Arthur Harris, now Commander-in-Chief of Bomber Command, had spent some of the happiest years of his life out there. Perhaps a little bit of favouritism had come into play, but there had to be one squadron that received the first production Lancasters, and the Rhodesia Squadron had as good a claim as any other; certainly, as one of 5 Group's principal squadrons they had already toiled hard and sacrificed many. Although neighbouring 97 Squadron, at Woodhall Spa, had been next to re-equip with Lancasters, it had been 44 Squadron who had taken them first into battle, carrying out minelaying operations off the north German coast on 3–4 March. Now, along with six Lancasters from 97, they were taking part in the new bomber's first daylight operation and the first inland since Bomber Command had switched to night-bombing operations back in 1940.
But already this mission, codenamed Operation MARGIN, was not going entirely to plan. The Lancasters from 44 Squadron had been due to rendezvous with those from 97 Squadron over Grantham, but they had failed to do so. Although the crews had been training for two weeks, the squadrons had had just one practice link-up – again, over Grantham, three days earlier. They had not managed to find each other then, so perhaps it was no great surprise that they had failed to do so now that the training was over and the operation was happening for real. Bomber crews were used to operating at night, in no formation whatsoever, but, even on a clear sunny day, the sky remained a very big place and seven large aircraft, despite their size, could be hard to spot from more than a few miles.
So when 44 Squadron's Lancasters had reached Grantham and seen no sign of those from 97, Squadron Leader John Nettleton, flying B-Baker, and officially leading the entire two-squadron formation, had decided his flight should press on. He was conscious that time was of the essence, and in any case had never really thought of the operation as being really combined. Yes, they had carried out the same training as those from 97 Squadron, but apart from a few joint meetings had never actually trained together. Both flights knew the target and how to get there; it did not strike Nettleton as particularly necessary that they should fly there as one.
But the failure to rendezvous, however, was the least of Nettleton's worries. Unbeknown to him, it was the timings of the operation, which he had been told were so crucial to the mission's success, that were already going badly awry.
The Boston attacks on Cherbourg and Rouen had been launched primarily as a diversion. MARGIN's planning team at Bomber Command Headquarters in High Wycombe had been all too aware of the dangers of a daytime operation, but they were equally conscious that the biggest threat came from the only two enemy fighter groups still based in north-west France, JGs 2 and 26. If a diversionary raid could be launched just before the Lancasters flew over the French coast, then the German fighters in the area could be drawn away from them. Furthermore, if Nettleton's crews flew low – under 500 feet – they would pass undetected under the enemy's radar. And if they flew really low – under a hundred feet – they would be even safer from enemy fighters. 'It should be borne in mind,' noted Air Vice-Marshal Elworthy, Senior Air Staff Officer (SASO) at Bomber Command Headquarters in his Operation Order No. 143, 'that flying at ground level presents the most difficult problem to the attacking fighters'.
In any case, Elworthy was pretty confident that not only were German fighters thin on the ground – and in the air – over Normandy, but that by flying in close formation (something they did not do in night ops), the Lancasters would offer a pretty strong defensive shield. 'The fire power of a section of three heavy bombers,' he added, 'is such as to deter all but the most determined of enemy fighters.'
Combined operations of bombers and fighters operating over the continental coast were not uncommon. 'Circuses', as they were called, were frequent, with swarms of Spitfires offering protection for the bombers. And Elworthy had been most explicit about the timings: zero-hour was to be the time the Lancasters crossed the Normandy coast at Dives-sur-Mer. 'The circus operations,' he wrote, 'will be so timed that the bombing of Cherbourg and the target in the Pas de Calais area will take place simultaneously at Z minus 10.' In other words, the German fighters would then be busy tangling with 11 Group's Spitfires at the moment the Lancasters sneaked over the French coast. Further inland, the heavy bombers would, it was reckoned, probably have only light antiaircraft fire to deal with, but by continuing to fly low and at speeds of some 250 mph, there was every chance the bombers would be past these before the gunners on the ground ever knew about them.
Fighter Command had also been generous with its support. No fewer than three wings, of some nine squadrons, making a total of around 108 Spitfires, had been detailed for the diversionary circus, which would be stacked up over the targets and out over the Channel at heights ranging from 10,000 to 24,000 feet. It was no wonder the enemy fighters of JG 26 had skulked off as soon as they saw them. On the face of it, nothing, it seemed, had been left to chance.
And yet for all this, somehow, somewhere along the line, the timings as dictated by Bomber Command and those issued for the diversionary circus by Fighter Command had drastically diverged.
On 12 April, four days after Elworthy had issued his operation order, Air Commodore Simpson, the SASO at Fighter Command HQ, had issued his own ops order to the three fighter wings, and had changed the timing of the circus attack to Z minus 50 rather than 10 minutes. This major error had not been corrected by the morning of the raid, when details of the operation were issued to the Tangmere, Kenley and Northolt fighter wings. As far as Fighter Command was concerned the targets were due to be bombed at 1600 hours, four o'clock in the afternoon, fifty, not ten, minutes before the Lancasters were due to cross the coast. Clearly anxious about this mix-up, HQ Bomber Command had hurriedly fired off a cypher message at 1245, almost three hours before any of the aircraft were to be airborne. 'Operation MARGIN Zero hours 1650,' ran the signal, and for extra clarification it then ran, '(1650 Double Summer Time). Acknowledge. Please confirm by phone.'
No acknowledgement was ever received.
At around 4.45 p.m., only five minutes earlier than Elworthy's plan, the six Lancasters from 44 Squadron were now approaching the French coast. Flying in two inverted 'V' formations – or 'vics' – with Nettleton's aircraft, B-Baker, leading, they climbed slightly to clear the coast, not at Dives, but a little further east along the coast at Villers-sur-Mer, then changed course south towards their next marker on the outward journey, the French town of Sens, around 200 miles away. Not far behind them, but a little further to the west, the six Lancasters from 97 Squadron, led by Squadron Leader John Sherwood, were also approaching the French coast, at Dives. It was just then that Sherwood reckoned he saw the boys from 44: just a glint in the sunlight, tiny dots away to his left. It was his one and only sighting.
Nettleton's co-pilot, the 21-year-old Pilot Officer Pat Dorehill, saw nothing of their fellow Lancasters, but was in no way concerned about that. In fact, Dorehill was rather enjoying himself. He had been excited by the entire operation. After all, it had meant two weeks off ops and plenty of practice, flying both formation – which none of them had done since flight training – and low-level. It had been terrific fun. Nor was he the sort of person to get 'windy' about ops. A bit apprehensive before take-off, perhaps, but nothing more; there were no pre-flight superstitions or mascots for him.
A Rhodesian, like Nettleton, Dorehill had been at university when war had broken out, and had been planning to go into mining, but had immediately volunteered for the Air Force instead. Like most Rhodesians, he was fiercely patriotic, and wanted to do his bit, and, since he had enjoyed watching the weekly Imperial Airways flying boats and South African Junkers passenger planes flying over, thought that becoming a pilot himself would offer plenty of excitement and adventure. He had not been disappointed.
After gaining his wings in Rhodesia and having already been singled out as having the right temperament for bombers, he had shipped over to England to finish his training. By the autumn of 1941, he was posted as a sergeant pilot to 44 Squadron, where he began flying the increasingly obsolete twin-engine Hampdens. Despite the lack of armament on the Hampdens, Dorehill had approached the prospect of operational flying with his usual phlegmatism. He was, by nature, an optimist; other people might get the chop, but not him, and having survived some fifteen ops, his old four-man crew had been split up and Dorehill posted a month earlier onto Nettleton's crew as co-pilot in preparation for his conversion to Lancasters.
'Co-pilot' was, however, something of a misnomer. The Lancasters were not dual control. Instead, Dorehill had to perch on a fold-down seat just below and at ninety degrees to the right of the pilot. Most of the time, he tended to stand instead, with the seat folded back up against the side. His role was to observe Nettleton, to help with pre-flight checks before take-off and to watch various dials and complete tasks such as the switch from one set of fuel tanks to another. In between, there was time to look out through the Perspex canopy and tear-drop viewing pane that enabled him to see straight down to the ground below.
And as they sped over France at around a hundred feet off the deck, that was quite a view. There was Caen to his right, and the Normandy countryside spread out around him. From that low height, he could see people below look up in wonder at these low-flying beasts, with their 102-foot-wide wing span and four throbbing Rolls-Royce Merlin engines, hurtling past at some 250 mph. Dorehill was enjoying himself.
The briefings for the operation had been given at 1100 hours that morning. U-boats, they were told, were causing untold destruction out at sea, especially to the Atlantic lifeline, and there were more on their way. At Bremen, at Kiel, and at Hamburg along the German Baltic coast, more and more submarines were being built. But, it was explained, those U-boats required engines – diesel engines to be precise. And these engines, invented by Rudolf Diesel in 1892, were principally built in Augsburg, Doctor Diesel's former home town, at the Maschinenfabrik Augsburg-Nürnberg, better known as the M.A.N. Works. From Lincolnshire, this was a 1,600-mile round trip, a huge distance even for the Lancaster.
At Woodhall Spa, most had guessed the operation would be a lengthy one: the long-distance training flights had suggested that, and there had been rumours that morning that the fuel tanks were being filled to maximum capacity. However, when the curtain had been pulled back and the target revealed, the chosen crews had all broken out into spontaneous laughter. Flying Officer Ernest 'Rod' Rodley, pilot of F-Freddie, could not believe the powers-that-be would be so foolish as to send twelve of its newest bombers all that distance and in broad daylight. 'We sat back and waited calmly for someone to say, "Now the real target is this," ' he noted. 'Unfortunately it was the real target.' As the realization set in, the briefing room became very quiet.
A few miles away at Waddington, the briefing for the 44 Squadron crews had prompted not laughter but certainly a sharp intake of breath. 'Don't be overawed by the distance to the target,' they were told. 'The RAF must strike this blow to help our seamen, and your Lancasters are the only aircraft that can strike it – with a fighting chance.' Nor would they be flying entirely in daylight. The plan was that they should hit the target in dusk and then fly the return leg under cover of darkness. Pat Dorehill had been surprised by the choice of target – he'd heard a rumour that they would be attacking the German battleship Tirpitz, but had not been overly concerned by the danger. The plan seemed sound enough to him, and he was convinced by the argument that six Lancasters flying together would offer a very robust defence. 'If we were attacked,' he says, 'I thought we would be able to give as good as we got, so I wasn't too bothered.'
Furthermore, he had complete faith in Nettleton, whom he was now standing beside as they turned south-east. Some light flak had opened up just as they had crossed the coast, but none of the planes appeared to have been hit. Nettleton dropped lower still, just above the rooftops, and Dorehill could now see people stopping to wave, while in the fields cattle and other livestock ran in fright as the Lancasters roared over them.
Soon after, they found themselves following the line of a railway and there was a train, heading south-east. Nettleton's gunner asked whether they could open fire, but their skipper told them to hold off. He didn't want ammunition being wasted. The railway was now on a raised embankment so that the Lancasters were flying almost alongside, rather than above, the train.
It was soon after this that they were approaching Beaumont-le-Roger. V-Victor was at the back of the formation, on the port side of the second vic, but her pilot, Warrant Officer John Beckett, now suddenly spotted the glint of fighters returning to base away to his left. They had been told at the briefing to observe strict radio silence except in emergency, but Beckett reckoned this was an emergency all right.
'One-oh-nines!' he exclaimed over the R/T. 'At eleven o'clock high!'
During the briefings, the crews had been assured that the route was due to miss any enemy airfields, and yet the course from the coast to Sens was always going to run pretty close to Beaumont-le-Roger, a major Luftwaffe fighter airfield since the summer of 1940 and well-known to the RAF, so it is strange that the prescribed route should have run them so close. Perhaps had 44 Squadron crossed at Dives-sur-Mer, like Sherwood's Lancasters in 97 Squadron and as specified in the original operation order, they might have missed it; but at Waddington they had been briefed to cross at Villers-sur-Mer, six miles further along. It probably made all the difference. Even so, the navigators would have planned their route carefully beforehand, with pencil lines marked onto maps. Draw a straight line from Villers-sur-Mer to Sens, and it will pass right over Beaumont-le-Roger. Yet, for some reason, Beaumont had not been flagged up.
As it was, the railway they were following also led directly to Beaumont. Out on the airfield, the Lancasters were both heard and then spotted. Otto Happel, a signaller at JG 2, the 'Richthofen' HQ, heard the shouts, and immediately put a warning out over the radio to the Focke-Wulf 190s of the II. Gruppe that were now coming back into land from the earlier scrap with the Bostons and Spitfires. Commanding JG 2 was Major Walter 'Gulle' Oesau, one of the Luftwaffe's leading aces, with more than a hundred kills to his name. He had been in the HQ building at the time, but Happel now watched him rush out and run as fast as he could to his Me 109, which was always kept at immediate readiness. Right behind him was Fritz Edelmann, his wing man. Within a couple of minutes, Oesau and Edelmann were hurtling down the runway in hot pursuit of the bombers.
Ahead of them was Kommandeur Heino Greisert, commander of II. Gruppe, and several of his pilots in their FW 190s, rather than Me 109s, who had been coming into land, undercarriage down, when they had heard Happel's warning. Greisert had immediately opened the throttle, retracted the undercarriage, and pulling back on the stick had climbed once more in hot pursuit.
'Roger, wing men keep tight!' Nettleton had called out in response to Beckett's warning. Standing beside Nettleton, Pat Dorehill had turned around, peering out of the astrodome at the enemy fighters as they initially appeared to be landing, but then he saw the undercarriage of the lead fighter fold up back into the wings and the machine surge forward.
Moments later, Crum's Lancaster, T-Tommy, at the rear right of the formation, was under attack, a bullet hitting the canopy, Perspex splinters spitting around the cabin. Now, however, the lone attacker had been joined by more, and suddenly a Focke-Wulf was bearing down on Beckett's plane. None of the crew of V-Victor could have known it, but this was Kommandeur Greisert himself, another ace, and in moments his cannon shells had struck. Flame lashed out from one of the engines, spreading in a trice as the fuel tanks caught alight and enveloping the fuselage so that the stricken Lancaster appeared to be engulfed by angry fire. Beckett's plane slowly dropped height, flame and smoke trailing behind, before plunging into a field, ploughing a vicious furrow and then smashing into some trees and exploding into a million pieces of metal and oil, rubber and incinerated flesh.
In T-Tommy, Crum was still desperately trying to fly, but over his intercom he could hear someone shouting that they were hit. The port wing was on fire, while large holes of torn and flapping metal had been ripped out of the fuselage. Crum jettisoned the bombs, and immediately the Lancaster seemed to momentarily lift, but it was too late. In the nose, front gunner Sergeant Bert Dowty watched with mounting horror as the ground rushed towards them. My God! he thought. We're going to crash. Crummy's going to fly us straight into the deck! Instinctively, he drew his knees up, waiting for the crash and what he knew must surely be his last moments. But then the Lancaster seem to glide, just above the stall, and with the ground ahead now clear of trees, Crum managed to slide the still burning Lancaster gently onto its belly. With a screech and groan of thirty tons of metal scraping across the ground, T-Tommy finally came to a halt. While the crew clambered out, Dowty found himself trapped in the nose, the escape hatch now resting on the ground. Taking the Browning machine gun from its mounting, he swung it at the Perspex, but could not get enough of a swing to hit it hard enough. Beginning to panic, Dowty then saw a bloodied Crum clamber down into the nose and hack a hole with a crash axe. Pushing their way out, Crum turned to Dowty and said, 'You know the drill. Destroy the kit and clear off. I want to see what's happened over there.'
Dowty watched his pilot run towards V-Victor's crash site. Beckett had been his closest friend.
In B-Baker, Pat Dorehill was watching the battle from the astrodome, while both he and Nettleton were receiving a running commentary from Flight Sergeant Harrison, the rear gunner. With both Victor and Tommy down, the German fighters were concentrating on Flight-Lieutenant Nick Sandford's plane, P-Peter. Sandford had been one of the first pilots to convert to Lancasters and was one of the most skilled in the squadron, yet he could not shake off the 190s on his tail. Swerving and yawing the aircraft as much as he dared, he then dropped even lower, flying at zero height. At one point he even flew the Lancaster under a line of power cables. Three fighters followed him, but with his controls now damaged and engines on fire, even Sandford was unable to hold the great beast steady. A moment later, a wing tip clipped the ground and the Lancaster cartwheeled and exploded in a ball of fire, killing the crew instantly. It was the Richthofen's thousandth recorded kill.
'We're down to three, Skipper,' came Harrison's voice over the intercom in B-Baker.
Pat Dorehill had seen the blast of fire from the disintegrating Lancaster and crew. All three of the second section had now been shot down and the German fighters were still swarming around the surviving lead section. Worse, far from returning the kind of robust fire that had been predicted, the three Lancasters were discovering that they were horribly out-gunned. On Nettleton's starboard side, H-Howe's six machine guns were all jammed, no doubt from overheating, while, in B-Baker, Harrison's rear two machine guns had also jammed. Although the mid-upper gunner was still firing, the machine-gun bullets were nothing like as effective as the Focke-Wulfs' and Messerschmitts' combined machine guns and 20mm cannons.
For the attacking German fighters, it was all too obvious that the right-hand Lancaster – H-Howe – was the weakest, and it was this one that Major Oesau, now joining the fray, targeted. Closing until he was at almost point-blank range, he opened fire with both his cannons and machine guns, swinging the nose so that it raked the width of the aircraft.
In B-Baker, Pat Dorehill, still standing in the cockpit beside Nettleton, could now see the destruction of the fourth Lancaster in the formation in graphic detail. Flames were streaking along the wing and rapidly growing so that in moments the fuselage was awash with fire too. Dorehill watched as Dusty Rhodes, the pilot, struggled desperately to keep the stricken aircraft airborne, and then suddenly it seemed to climb, before swooping back down again directly towards B-Baker. Dorehill flinched but then it was gone, diving underneath their starboard wing and crashing with another deadly explosion. 'It only missed us by a fraction,' says Dorehill. 'And you could see their faces in the cockpit. It was quite gruesome.'
The two remaining Lancasters flew on.
Around them, however, the enemy fighters still swarmed. Dorehill now noticed vapour trails from the starboard wing, a sign of a fuel leak, but no sooner had he told Nettleton than another Messerschmitt roared down upon them, machine guns firing, and slid between them as they brushed the treetops. Another German fighter attacked, this time Oesau's wingman, Edelmann, his cannons spent and so drawing as close as he dared to use his machine guns. A splinter flew across the cockpit. 'What the hell?' said Dorehill, clapping a hand to his neck. But he was lucky – a graze only. Nettleton began laughing, the tension, strangely, moment arily relieved by the expression of indignation rather than pain on Dorehill's face. Behind them, machine guns from their own aircraft and from A-Apple on their port continued to chatter, and at last a lone bullet seemed to hit the pursuing Messerschmitt. With a puff of smoke from the engine, Edelmann broke off and suddenly their pursuers were gone, ammunition and fuel spent.
It was now 5.15 p.m. and just two of the six 44 Squadron Lancasters remained, Nettleton's B-Baker and Flying Officer John Garwell's A-Apple. Nettleton and Dorehill wondered, briefly, whether they should head south and turn back over the Bay of Biscay, but then they dismissed the idea. There was a mission to do, after all. Those deaths would really have been for nothing if they gave up now, and, it seemed, the self-sealing lining on the fuel tanks had worked, for the vapour trail had gone. So they kept going, low over France, heading towards Switzerland and Lake Constance.
No other fighter aircraft troubled them, but they did fly over an army barracks or depot and, as far as Dorehill was concerned, the men below seemed to be ready for them because a volley of small arms greeted them. Not one bullet hit B-Baker, but A-Apple was peppered with small arms, so much so that his starboard wing tip was completely shredded and flapping uselessly. The men on the ground appeared to have been expecting them, but had they guessed the target was Augsburg or had the Germans been fooled into thinking it was probably Munich? Only time would tell.
They reached Switzerland without further incident, and flew low over Lake Constance, steam rising from the dark water, the sky above deepening as dusk approached. Then briefly they climbed over the Vosges Mountains, heading north-east before dropping once more as, at long last, Augsburg came into view nestling in a valley beneath forested hills.
Not only was the navigator carefully plotting the course, but both the bomb-aimer and Dorehill, next to Nettleton, also had maps. Dorehill reckoned his was pretty good – a scale of 1:500 – and he soon saw the canal that snaked through the town, and which led, as its course ran north-west, to the M.A.N. Works beside it. Already light flak was pumping into the sky, tracer arcing towards them. The two front gunners returned fire, but thankfully both Nettleton and Flight Lieutenant McClure, the bomb-aimer, had already spotted the distinct shape of the M.A.N. factory. With a low whirr, the bomb bay doors opened.
With the big wings and four engines of the Lancaster spread out either side of the cockpit and with the nose in front, neither Dorehill nor Nettleton could now see the target. They had to trust entirely in McClure, who was staring directly at the ground below through his bombsight. Flak and small arms continued to pepper the sky around them, sirens droned from below, the town now fully awake to the arrival of the two Lancasters, but McClure had his mind closed to all but the task in hand. 'Steady,' he told his pilot, then said, 'left, left.' And then, 'Bombs gone!'
Suddenly the Lancaster lurched upwards as the weight of the bombs left its belly, and both Nettleton and Dorehill began counting, knowing that on the beat of eleven seconds, the time-delayed fuses would ignite and the bombs explode. And then a flash of light behind them and the ripple of explosions, as Nettleton continued banking to the west. At the M.A.N. plant, parts of the roof and the upper floor were hurtling into the sky as the blast tore through the factory. From the rear, Harrison reported a direct hit. It was 7.55 p.m., still dusk, and the M.A.N. plant was disappearing behind a cloud of dust and debris.
But as Nettleton now looked around for Garwell, he could no longer see him off his port wing.
'Can you see A-Apple, rear gunner?' he asked Harrison over the intercom.
'Starboard quarter, Skipper, a bit above us,' came the reply, 'I think he's got a fire in the fuselage.'
Dorehill could now see the burning Lancaster himself. All around Augsburg were hills, mostly wooded hills, with little or no opportunity for making a forced landing. It was clear Garwell's plane was not going to survive – not with flame billowing from the fuselage, not at such low height; not with thick, choking smoke, billowing into the cockpit. Somehow, though, Garwell managed to find an open field, and the next moment it was sliding and grinding its way across the grass until finally it came to a halt as it broke in two. All but one escaped unhurt. Theirs had been a very lucky escape.
Soon after B-Baker had turned for home, the six Lancasters of 97 Squadron reached Augsburg after a largely uneventful flight, but the town's gunners were alert and ready and soon flak was pouring into the air towards them. Flying Officer Rodley, in F-Freddie, had been sitting on an inverted tin helmet the whole way and now, as he approached the still smoking factory, was glad for it, however uncomfortable, as bullets and shards of flak clattered along the underside of the Lancaster. Black puffs of exploding heavy flak were also peppering the sky. At the briefing, they had been told the 88mm guns could not be brought to bear on low-flying aircraft, but it didn't seem that way now.
Realizing the assembly shed – their main target – was too narrow for three Lancasters flying side by side to attack together, Rodley now fell back behind the leader, Squadron Leader Sherwood, dropping his bombs a fraction later. Emerging through the smoke, he now saw white vapour trailing from Sherwood's Lancaster, K-King, then it immediately turned black and a moment later flames were billowing from the aircraft. He saw the flaming Lancaster slowly swing to the starboard and heard one of his gunners call out, 'Christ, Skipper, he's going in. A flaming chrysanthemum!' Even before their bombs had exploded, K-King had crashed into the ground, the Lancaster breaking up in bursts of angry flame. Despite this, and unbeknown to Rodley, Sherwood alone had survived. Still strapped to his seat, he had been flung out of the cockpit, his fall broken by the pines growing around.
Now the final section of three, some way behind Sherwood's section, reached Augsburg. Already, as they neared the town, Warrant Officer Mycock's Lancaster was hit, mortally, as it turned out, in the front turret, with fire spreading rapidly. Despite this, Mycock flew on, and even managed to drop his bombs on target. The pilot was still at his controls when it suddenly swung to port and plunged into the ground, bursting into flames. All on board were killed. Another of the three, Flying Officer Deverill's aircraft, Y-York, had also been hit in the starboard wing and his outer port engine had also stopped, but at least it was still flying. And at least it was now nearly dark.
Before midnight, all four Lancasters from 97 Squadron had safely made it back to Woodhall Spa, including Deverill's Y-York, which had flown the entire leg on three engines. None of them had returned unscathed; all had battle damage of various degrees of severity. But while the surviving crews were tucking into bacon and eggs, across Lincolnshire, at Waddington, the silence of the night had been stultifying. Not one Lancaster had returned.
As midnight came and went, and with still no distant hum of engines to break the silence of the night, the duty staff had been stood down. The lights in the hangars were switched off. Not one of the crews, it seemed, would be returning.
But B-Baker had not been lost, but was lost – hopelessly lost. The return leg had, thankfully, been uneventful except for one thing: they had been unable to get a bearing that would fix their position.
Perhaps, then, they had been flying the wrong course, even though Pilot Officer Sands, the navigator, had already carefully worked out the bearings for the route home. Nettleton had begun to lose faith in the master gyro-compass, from which the cockpit gyro was set, and so Dorehill now clambered back, over the two wing spars, towards the rear of the fuselage to the hatch, next to which the master gyro-compass was kept, hanging freely in a wire cage to prevent it from being knocked about. Nettleton had wondered whether perhaps, at some point, the compass had been knocked so badly that it had stuck at an angle that had given it misleading readings from then on. Dorehill, however, found nothing wrong with it at all and, having clambered back, reported this to Nettleton. The skipper, even so, decided to use the P4 compass instead from then on. This was a secondary, magnetic compass that lay underneath the main panel to the pilot's left. It was reliable enough in straight and level flight, but the needle flickered in any turn and was tricky to read at night.
At any rate, when they finally crossed the coastline, they were pretty certain it didn't look like France. Eventually, at half past midnight and with fuel low, Nettleton admitted defeat and ordered Sergeant Charlie Churchill, the wireless operator, to get a fix.
'Can I use SOS, Skipper?' asked Churchill.
'Use what you like, but get us home,' Nettleton replied. Churchill tapped out the familiar dots and dashes but for what seemed like a painfully long time there was nothing. He tried again, tapping out the signal once more, and then, at last, to his enormous relief, he received a reply and moments later an answer to his request for range and bearing information to the airfield.
'Course is zero-seven-zero, sir,' Churchill relayed to Nettleton. 'They're sending us to Squire's Gate.'
Sands was studying the map. 'That's just south of Blackpool,' he told them. 'It means we're over the Irish Sea.' They had overshot England altogether.
At 0059, on the morning of 18 April 1942, B-Baker safely touched down on the grass airfield of Squire's Gate after some ten hours in the air, the last of just five out of twelve Lancasters to return.
The Augsburg Raid was finally over.
