ME543, thank you for the correction, it was from memory as I didn’t have the book to hand. I have now.

His narrative style is novelistic rather than chronological. Rather than take us through one mission from preping the aircraft, mission planning, kitting up, pre-flight etc etc he feed small pieces of information that eventually build up to a big picture. He does not tie any raid to a date so it is not possible to say with any certainty to which Berlin raid his narrative refers.

I will give a flavour of his style as he leads us to the Berlin raid.

“Operation postponed!”
. . .
“For two hours – wait in the mess.”

By the time we reached the mess, it was fully dark and raining heavily. The crews had taken off their flying clothing and were lolling in chairs like men reprieved. We had been told to return to the crew room at 9 o’clcok, but at 7.30 the tannoy demanded we report immediately.

. . .

“A scrub?”

“Command is determined that you’ll go.”

. . .

The forecast was gloomy in the extreme: cloud heaped on cloud to 15,000 feet: a front across the North Sea; a low icing level.

. . .

The wing commander said “You must leave immediately. Navigators can complete their flight plans in the aircraft.”

. . .

Soon after the engines started I felt a prod from Graham. “here’s the 500.” He thrust a grimy file of papers into my hand to be passed to Geoff. A moment later they came back with G Maddern pencilled in the usual place, indcating his acceptance of the aircraft.

[This is the first time he has mentioned an aircraft being signed for.]

. . .

When I plugged in my headphones I heard the vpoice of the duty controller. this was unusual, as we were observing radio silence.

“All aircraft standby! The flarepath is changing to runway zero six.”

“Hell, there’ll be some fun now!”

In a few moments an aircraft broke silence.

“Control from H Harry, permission to switch off – my engines are overheating.”

There were sharp exchanges with control, then the pilot’s abrupt decision, “H Harry – I’m switching off.”

Other aircraft began reporting the same difficulty, but the more experienced men were silent. On other aerodromes the same trouble was being reported. A wind change along the east coast had necessitated the change in direction of take-off. In many case whole lines of ‘planes standing nose to tail had to turn about in the darkness. On one squadron this resulted in such chaos that the operation was cancelled; on another, only three got away. At Elsham we were more fortunate, only two crews failing to take off.

At 0040 Berlin filled the southern horizon.

“Not as bad as the Valley,” remarked Doug drily, “Not as concentrated.”

“I don’t need it no more damn’ concentrated than that!”

“How long before we bomb, navigator?”

“Three minutes.”

“Funny; it seems quiet.”

We continued towards the target, but although we reached the edge of the search light belt the city remained unmolested.

“Did you check your watch, navigator?”

“At final briefing – so did you.”

“Well, I make it forty-two and the attack was supposed to start at thrity-eight.”

“Forty-two is right. Probably the Pathfinders have boobed.”

“We’ll wait out here until something happens.”

For 15 minutes we circled Berlin. We did not know then that the attack had been put back 15 minutes; somehow the message had never reached us. For those 15 minutes 103 Sqn had Berlinto themselves. At fifty-four a Pathfinder marker was laid. A Lancaster dived on it and the attack began.

We heard the next morning that double the weight of bombs had been dropped as on the worst raid of the London blitz. Thirty-three aircraft were missing.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

That was the whole story of that raid. I would suggest that “A Lancaster dived on it” was not actually a dive in a sense of changin height but a ‘dive’ as in ‘pounce’, grab or get in quick.

Fifteen minutes just stooging around – balls the size of cannon balls.