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BBC - WW2 People's War - Not A Piece Of Cake

Not A Piece Of Cake
by W.G.Foster

A full moon in a cloudless sky shone down on the runway at RAF Oakington, near Cambridge as the Stirling Bomber, N3708 ”E”, took off on an incendiary raid on the warehouses along the Rhine at Cologne. It was 11.35 p.m. on 5th April 1942 and the crew consisted of Jack Davies, the 20 year old pilot; Pat Glover, navigator; Karl Norman, wireless operator; S. Trappett, the French-Canadian front gunner; “Enoch” Carter, rear gunner - a typical cockney and myself the flight engineer, an ex-apprentice aged 25 and probably the oldest member of the crew. This was my fourth operation and given a fair wind and little encumbrance we hoped in about five hours to return home having once again successfully completed another DCO - Duty Carried Out.

We crossed the channel at about 6,000 feet climbing to around 12,000 as we flew over the enemy coast, running the gauntlet of the shore batteries as we did so. Perhaps because we were among the leading aircraft the flak was not as heavy as we expected but still of some concern while we continued to climb as we neared the target area, until we reached around 20,000 feet. Several cones of searchlights swept the area as we approached the start of our “run-in”, which was the cathedral. A dark patch between two groups of searchlights offered some cover. From the astrodome I could see the cathedral standing out clearly below as the moon lit up the area like daylight. The navigator took up his position as bomb-aimer and I went to the rear to lower the flare chute to light up the area for a photograph. We seemed to fly straight and level for far too long as Pat directed the aircraft toward the target area. Inevitably, all hell was set loose and I was flung around in the rear of the fuselage as the pilot threw the aircraft into evasive action. I clambered back to my control panel to find the gauges swinging about all over the place. Worse still we were caught in a cone of searchlights with a master searchlight fixed firmly on us. Despite the severe evasive action taken by Jack, the brilliant bluish-green light held us in its glare whilst the yellow-white cones formed a cage around us. I had seen an aircraft on a previous trip caught in the searchlights and knew that we now appeared like a large sliver moth to the gunners below. Soon the air around us was filled with black and grey puffs of smoke and the smell of cordite drifted into the cockpit where the Perspex around the pilot’s head had been hit with shrapnel.

The blinding light and futile attempts to get out of the cone had begun to play on the pilot’s nerves and, in desperation, he yelled into his intercom, ‘What the Hell do I do now?’

Instinctively I replied, ‘Get the bloody nose down and dive!’ Immediately we went into a step dive followed by the master searchlight, which we could not get rid of. Suddenly, on the intercom, came the voice of Pat Glover, ‘Bill, I think Jack has had it, he is slumped over the control column and I cannot pull us out using the second pilot’s position.’ I scrambled forward and saw Jack slumped over the control column, splinters of Perspex glistened in his helmet from the hole in the windscreen above his head. I grabbed his shoulders and heaved as Pat pulled on the second control column but with no effect. Despite the situation, I was acutely aware of things around me and somehow the altitude gauge reading just 800 feet appears as clearly now as it did then. At the same time Jack suddenly sat upright and pulled on the control column and somehow we came out of the dive. I also remember the peculiar sick feeling in the pit of my stomach as we pulled out and thinking to myself, ‘Is this what they call sick with fear?’ One thing I did not realise at the time was how low we were and, in retrospect I have come to realise there was a moment in coming out of that dive that I was as near to death as I am ever likely to be. As we began to climb I remember seeing the skin of a barrage balloon lit by the beam of the master searchlight, which was still following us and angrily I shouted, ‘For God’s sake, put out that bloody light Enoch!’, to which he replied with a blast from the rear turret that either killed or dispersed the crew as, looking back from the astrodome I saw the beam was whirling around in horizontal circles.

Gradually we climbed to between 6000 and 8000 feet during which time I was able to check on my control panel. The petrol gauge readings were useless and the oil pressure on the starboard inner engine was dropping down to zero so I got the pilot to feather the propellers before we lost the oil, which operated the mechanism to do this. By now we were flying just above a bank of clouds at around 8000 feet when Enoch spotted a night fighter coming rapidly toward us. With the starboard inner engine stopped, the hydraulic pump that operated the rear turret was out of action. This meant that the gunner would have to turn the turret by hand. Whilst Enoch was struggling to do this, Jack decided to dive into the cloud and then back up again, whilst the fighter went straight on through and no doubt thinking that he had been observed, did not attack again.

The sudden dive to the cloud, however, caused the starboard inner propeller to windmill. A cold engine with no lubrication could only have disastrous results and the aircraft started to shudder from front to back, nasty grinding sounds came from the engine and parts started to fly off. One of the three propeller blades broke off and hit the side of the aircraft, the other two seemed to wrench the reduction gear and tore most parts of the engine out, damaging the propeller of the starboard outer engine as they flew into space leaving a large gaping hole in the wing, which had once housed the starboard inner engine.

Somehow by balancing the power of the two good engines on the port side with the one partly damaged on the starboard side, Jack was able to maintain a fairly steady course at between 6000 to 8000 feet.

Up until now things had been happening so fast and generally outside of our control that we had little time to take stock of the hazardous situation we were in. All the navigation instruments were out of action, the map was torn to shreds, we had no idea of our position or how much petrol we had, were using or losing, the rear gun turret was virtually useless and it would have been almost impossible to take evasive action if we were attacked. We were blissfully unaware of what damage the violent vibration would do to the metal fuselage but we began to realise that we would have to start thinking ahead of further set-backs if we were to survive.

It was perhaps the sound of Sergeant Trappett, who had left his intercom on, reading his rosary, as Enoch put it, that made me think that we might call upon some divine help. The strictness of church parades during my early years had somewhat weakened my faith and I compromised by promising to go to church at least once if we got out of this. Pat, in an endeavour to get a fix on our position, was resorting to basics but the
lack of stars did little to help. Looking around from the astrodome to see if there was
any familiar territory, a peculiar incident occurred. Flying parallel to us on the port side
was the perfect black silhouette of an aircraft similar to ours. I stared intently at it for
some time, believing for a while in the superstition among airmen that the ghosts of non-survivors sometimes guided lost and damaged aircraft back home. I soon realised that the moon was on our starboard side and what I was looking at was the perfect shadow of our ‘plane reflected onto a bank of white cloud. However, the impression it had on me was that it was indeed a sign that we were heading in the right direction, which a little later was confirmed.

Every so often Jack would ask on the state of the fuel for which I had concocted some sort of formula based on several unknown factors and which, in truth, was pure guesswork. The confidence of my reply from then on seemed to convince everyone that we had plenty of fuel to carry on with. The next bit of luck (or miracle) was, that after heading in the same direction for some while, we ended up over some docks on the coast in which a large liner was berthed. The deck was as clear as daylight as the moon lit it up and I remember the clear cut shadows of the lifeboats along its deck. A discussion arose between Jack, Pat and I as to where it was. Pat was of the opinion that it was Southampton backed up by the fact that there was no unfriendly gunfire. However, from the astrodome, I could see a long flat stretch of coastline and was convinced it was Rotterdam. This set us thinking that we were still a long way from home and the point was made that perhaps we should turn around and bale out. Then it was decided that we might ditch in the sea and try to get ashore, so we carried on. Soon after we spotted a small convoy sailing up the channel and agreed that if we were to ditch near them they would pick us up. We made toward them and were circling around when they opened up on us with a barrage of light flak, which made us hastily withdraw and carry on toward our own coastline. We later discovered that there were no allied convoys in the channel that night.

As we neared the English Coast our May Day call had already been picked up and some searchlights near the channel were beckoning us in the direction of one our southern aerodromes by dipping down and pointing out the course to follow. In the meantime, being well overdue we had discussed our chances of getting much further and again thought it might be safer to bale out over the coast, then the pilot and I would ditch the aircraft near the shore. However, attempts to get the crew to abandon the aircraft proved useless so we decided to carry on. We soon arrived over an aerodrome where Wellingtons were doing night flying exercises and, whilst we were circling to land, one of these almost flew straight into us. After a few expletives, Jack decided to make for home and this we did. Arriving over our aerodrome there was no reply to our request to land and no runway lights to welcome us. However, the moon lit up the runway and without any unnecessary positioning, we headed in for landing. Despite the handicap of the damaged engines, Jack put the aircraft down as if nothing was wrong and as the tail went down, the engines cut out for lack of fuel and we slid off the runway onto the grass.

We landed at 5.35 a.m. on the 6th April, one hour overdue. We waited sometime for the dispersal bus and when it arrived several RAF Regiment personnel with fixed bayonets sprang out at us. We stood laughing hysterically at the large hole in the wing as the Regimental lads explained that the terrible noise we made as we approached sounded
like a squadron of German ‘planes coming in to attack the aerodrome and the alert had been sounded. Next morning we were congratulated on our efforts, the C.O. adding that a more experienced crew would have baled out rather than attempting to return to base. Subsequently, Jack was awarded a DFM and he, Pat and I were recommended to be commissioned. I, together with the rest of the crew, went on to complete a tour of 30 operations during which there were many individual incidents of a hazardous nature but, looking back, I realise that since the moment we pulled out of that dive over Cologne in the early hours of the 6th April 1942, I have lived for over 60 years on borrowed time.