Damned Good Show (2 page)

“Bloody clever,” someone muttered.

“The Intelligence Officer will give you the details.”

This was a heavy-set flight lieutenant, very bald, with a mustache thick enough to hide his expression. Above the medal ribbons, his half-wing of an observer had weathered to pearl gray. He was the only man in the squadron to wear spectacles. Everyone called him Bins, short for binoculars.

He unrolled a map of northern Europe. “To refresh your memory: Germany has two stretches of coastline,” he said. “One on each side of Denmark. Obviously, the more important, for us, is the North Sea coastline. It's nearer, and it has important naval bases at Wilhelmshaven and Emden, plus the inland ports of Bremen and Hamburg. Beyond Denmark, on the Baltic, the German navy also uses Brunsbüttel, here at the mouth of the Kiel Canal. All those warships are available for attack under the Roosevelt Rules. Provided …”

He hooked another roll of paper over the map and let it fall open.

“This is Wilhelmshaven. You see the town
here
, and the docks
here.
The area in blue is the bay. Now, if a German cruiser, for instance, is tied up to the dockside, you must not bomb it.” He surveyed them over his horn-rims. They looked unhappy. Good. That meant they were listening. “Civilians live nearby. Some may be dockers. Your bombs might harm them.”

“Hard cheese,” someone growled.

“Any German vessel, warship or otherwise, attached to the dockside is part of the mainland and therefore immune. But …” Bins indulged himself in a short pause, “… if the ship is out
here
, offshore, maybe anchored, maybe not, it's considered to be at sea. You can sink it with a clear conscience.”

“Are the Huns playing by the same rules?” a pilot asked.

“The German government has not yet responded.”

“Too busy bombing Poland.”

“Possibly. A few words about Denmark, Holland and Belgium. They are neutral and anxious to remain so. Fly over them and you may get shot at by their anti-aircraft guns, perhaps even attacked by their fighters …”

Bins answered a few questions and removed his maps. Rafferty stepped forward. The briefing had disappointed him: too flat, not enough gusto. “One last thing,” he said briskly. “Don't believe anything an air marshal tells you.” That made them stare. “When he's called Hermann Goering.” They laughed, which was what he wanted. “Half of it's lies and the other half's tosh. That's not our style. The Royal Air Force might not get everything absolutely right but at least we don't appoint an air marshal who's too fat to get in a cockpit.” They laughed more freely. “And remember this. You're lucky, damned lucky. This war isn't going to be all mud and blood,
like last time. This will be the war of the knockout blow, and you're the boys with the big punch. Good luck!”

Walking back to the Mess for lunch, Rafferty said: “The chaps are in fine fettle, aren't they? Itching for a scrap.”

“It's quite crazy, sir,” Hunt said.

“Of course it is, old boy. Totally lunatic.”

“We're not trained to bomb ships. Nobody in the Command is.”

“Of course not. You counted on mainland targets. We all did. You're damn good at hitting them, given a spot of decent weather.”

“Warships dodge about so much.”

“Yes. They carry a lot of guns, too.”

“That's another thing, sir. What's the best way to hit a ship? Should we go in low?”

“If it was me, I'd be up at eight or ten thousand feet, where the guns can't reach. Not the light guns, anyway.”

“From ten thousand, the target's as thin as a pin and the bombs drift with the wind.”

“Well, in that case the whole thing's absurd.”

“Crazy.” Hunt kicked the head off a dandelion. “But I suppose we'll go ahead and do it anyway.”

“Certainly. Lunatic orders are in the finest tradition of the Service. Don't think too much. Just do it.”

At about that time, an RAF Blenheim took off and headed across the North Sea. The weather was calm. A couple of hours later, the pilot was pleased to discover that he was bang on course, high above the approaches to Wilhelmshaven. That was good flying, plus a slice of luck.

Soon the crew looked down on a perfect view of fourteen German warships in formation: three battleships, four cruisers and seven destroyers. That was a really thick slice of luck. Immediately the Blenheim's wireless operator reported the sighting. His radio wasn't powerful enough to send a signal nearly four hundred miles. Bomber
Command HQ received tattered fragments of the message and made no sense of them. Nobody's luck lasts forever.

The Blenheim turned for home and flew into a storm. For the rest of the afternoon the pilot struggled against a thumping headwind. He landed shortly before five p.m. and made his report.

When the order to attack reached 409 Squadron, every crew wanted to go. All week they had been at various stages of alert; all day they had been on standby, sitting in their crew rooms, playing cards, reading stale news in newspapers, dozing, waiting, thinking. The sudden promise of action blew away boredom, but not for everyone. “Five aircraft,” Hunt announced. “That's all they want. Five. I'm leading.” He quickly picked four experienced crews. They took off at six-fifteen.

Already the light was poor. To the east it was worse: black with thunderstorms. They crossed the coast at Lowestoft. It was their last sight of land for almost six hours. Before long the wind was gusting so badly that Hunt opened out the formation, to avoid collision. They flew with their navigation lights on. Hunt knew that his five were only part of a large force of bombers—eighteen Hampdens and nine Wellingtons—all aiming for the same spot on the map. The longer they flew, the greater the risk that two machines might try to occupy exactly the same spot at the same time. Each with a full load of bombs. He put it out of his mind.

Once, in the fading light, he thought he saw aircraft far to the north. Then cloud blotted out the dots.

The rest of the trip was a matter of increasing misery and fatigue. The Hampdens bucketed through a succession of storms. The rain made a racing skin on the windscreens and the pilots flew by instrument. Always the wind was violent, and without doubt it was changing direction. The observers were navigating by dead reckoning: we are flying on
this
compass bearing at
that
speed so, allowing for such and such a wind, we must be
here.
The storms made fools of the compass and blew the predicted winds to buggery. The Hampdens slogged on. With luck they ought to strike Germany somewhere in the hundred-mile gap between Denmark and Holland.

Perhaps they did. The light was so poor and the weather was so thick that none of the bombers made a landfall. Nobody found Germany, let alone Wilhelmshaven, let alone a pin-thin, blacked-out warship.

Hunt gave up the search after three hours. His arms and legs ached
from the endless struggle to keep the Hampden on track. He had long since lost contact with the others. He got a course for home from his observer and steeled himself for another three hours of this wretched, bruising flight.

The last of his Hampdens touched down at ten minutes to midnight. Some of the gunners were so stiff with cold that they had to be lifted out of the aircraft.

The crews went to interrogation, then to supper, then to bed. Rafferty and Bins strolled to the Mess for a nightcap.

“At least we didn't lose anyone,” Rafferty said.

“Hell of a long way to go for nothing, sir. Suppose that German fleet was making twenty knots when it was spotted. Could be two hundred miles from Wilhelmshaven by now.”

“You won't mention that to the chaps.”

“Of course not. The brighter ones know it anyway. They had plenty of time to work it out for themselves, didn't they?”

After a late breakfast, Hunt called a meeting of the crews who had taken part in the operation. He wanted to pool their information. It made a small pool.

Nobody had seen anything. Even if they'd seen a ship, in that lousy weather nobody could have told the difference between a German cruiser and a Swedish freighter. The Bristol Pegasus engines had performed well, thank God. But on such a long flight, navigation had been a mix of faith, hope and guesswork. And the Hampden was an icebox, especially for the gunners. Two hours made them stiff as wood, three hours turned them numb, after four they were in pain, after five … They couldn't remember how they felt after five frozen hours. They couldn't remember much of anything.

“None of the other squadrons made contact,” Hunt said. “Not a wasted evening, however. Valuable training, jolly valuable.” He saw that they were not convinced of this. “We got thrown in at the deep end. A night op in stinking weather with orders to hammer the Hun
in his backyard, and the war not a day old! You chaps came through with flying colors. All right, that's all. Carry on, except Pilot Officers Silk and Langham.”

The others left. Hunt picked up two buff files and flicked through their contents. “Luck,” he said. “Do you have any views on luck? You should. It's lucky for you two this war came along when it did, isn't it?”

“Sir?” Langham said.

“You're what, twenty-two? Not many jobs out there for a pair of sacked bomber pilots with no ability except farting about.”

Silk blinked, twice. Otherwise he showed no emotion. He was taller than average and strong in the shoulders, as a good bomber pilot should be. He had dark hair and a clean-cut, open face, the kind that old ladies looked for when they wanted to be helped across a road. Hunt had seen many fools or liars or both with clean-cut, open faces; he disliked Silk and distrusted him. Silk was too well-tailored, his collars were a little too crisp, the thrust of his tie a fraction too dashing. His hair was wavy, which was no crime, but it had a rich, burnished glow that made Hunt suspect excessive brushing. Long ago he had written in Silk's file:
Is this man a bloody fop? Where's his handbag?

“If you get kicked out, you'll vanish,” Hunt said. “Into the army, probably. Lose your commissions, of course. Infantrymen. Brown jobs, that's what you'll be. Because why? Because we don't need clowns in the Royal Air Force.”

“Certainly not, sir.”

“Shut up, Silk. Last June, on a navigation exercise, you flew a Hampden under the Tamar railway bridge in Plymouth.”

“Chaps in Fighter Command do it all the time, sir.”

“Don't bring my squadron down to the level of those playboys, Silk.”

“No, sir.”

“In May, a Hampden beat up a point-to-point in Northamptonshire. Some clown flew around the course and jumped half the jumps. That was you, Langham.”

“Sir, I explained—”

“You invented a bunch of lies. One reason the RAF has always been short of funds for fuel and armaments is clowns like you make idiots of themselves in front of MPs at point-to-points.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And there's more. Look here: tedious complaints of aircraft playing silly buggers. No proof, but I know it's you two. And horseplay on the ground, too. God knows that Guest Nights can get a bit wild, but you, Silk, had to pick a fight
with an air commodore.”

“He challenged me, sir.”

“He was
drunk
, Silk. Pie-eyed. Why didn't you run away?”

“Matter of honor, sir.”

“Matter of a broken arm.” Hunt's left foot kept kicking his desk. “That man couldn't play bridge for six weeks.
Six weeks.
Didn't stop him signing snotty reports on this squadron. And as for your record of alcoholic excess, Langham …” Hunt glanced at him. Peculiar pair. Silk looked too young, Langham too old. He reminded Hunt of the jack of spades. Black hair, dark eyes, an obvious shadow where he'd shaved. Pity he didn't act his age. “I haven't forgotten your obscene behavior with the barmaid and the snake.”

“Allegedly obscene, sir. Case never came to court.”

“Only because Group Captain Rafferty plays golf with the Chief Constable.”

“She was an exotic dancer with a python, sir. They got into difficulties and I tried …”

“Bunkum. Now listen. If this squadron hadn't had such bad luck with accidents, I'd have kicked you out months ago. And I'd dump you now if it wasn't for Adolf bloody Hitler. What gripes me is you've both got ability. Silk, you should have made flying officer long ago.”

“I'm satisfied with my rank, sir.”

“I'm not. War is good for promotion. Pull your fingers out. You could be flight lieutenants in a year. But for Christ's sake keep your snotty little noses clean. Now buzz off.”

Another pilot who had taken part in the operation, Tubby Heckter, was hanging about outside the building, playing with the adjutant's dog. “Cozy chat?” he said.

“Pixie offered me fifty quid to marry his ugly sister,” Langham said.

“He tore you both off a strip. Thought so.” They headed for the Mess, booting an old tennis ball for the dog to chase.

“The Wingco's trouble is he doesn't understand us,” Langham said.

“What a shame,” Heckter said. “What doesn't he understand?”

“Oh, our modesty. Our humility.”

“Not his fault,” Silk said. “He's thicker than us, that's all.”

“He can't be,” Heckter said “You're one of the thickest blokes on the squadron.”

“I'm not thick. I may be dense, but I'm not thick.”

“Yes, you are, Silko. You're as thick as fog. Pug Duff said so.”

“Pug Duff? Dear little Pug, who trained with us? If I hadn't let him sit on my lap he'd never have got his wings. Pug is my biggest fan.”

“You pinched his girl,” Langham said. “He tried to kill you with a hockey stick.”

“Well, my smallest fan, then.”

“You can tell him how much he loves you,” Heckter said. “He's been posted here. He's in the Mess now.”