Operation Diver Read online

  The Air Marshal tried hard to put himself in the enemy’s position. If he had a fleet of long-range pilotless bombs at his disposal, he would not direct them at cities — but at the ports where, very soon, the huge invasion fleets would be massing. The consequences did not bear contemplation.

  Back in his office, he at once began to draft a plan for submission to the British Air Staff — a plan outlining firm offensive action that would eradicate the menace of the flying-bombs before it had time to develop fully.

  What was it the Germans called the device, with their peculiar sense of devilish drama? Vergeltungswaffe Eins, or something like that. Anyway, it meant ‘Reprisal Weapon Number One’ — or V-1 for short.

  The Air Marshal labelled his plan, ‘Operation Diver’, which seemed appropriate enough — and yet, at the same time, strangely inappropriate for this impersonal, winged torpedo speeding across the sky with a ton of death in its nose and no human hand at its controls. He wondered what other weird devices the German scientists were concocting in their witch’s kitchen. There was something sinister about the whole thing; as an Englishman would say, it wasn’t cricket.

  Suddenly, the Air Marshal chuckled. The overall plan would retain the code-name of Operation Diver: but thoughts of cricket, together with the fact that the V-1s had no pilot, had provided him with a beautifully apt code-word for the missiles themselves. Henceforward, they would be known as ‘No-Balls’.

  Over the weeks that followed, the very mention of the name would give many Allied pilots nightmares.

  Chapter Two

  Flight Lieutenant Steve Hardy, his visage as unsmiling as ever — a trait that had earned him the nickname of ‘Happy’ — pushed the plate of food away from him and glowered at it distastefully.

  ‘My God,’ he complained, ‘it gets worse. How the hell you can eat that muck beats me.’

  Yeoman looked at his mournful navigator across the breakfast table and grinned.

  ‘Scrambled egg and fried potatoes,’ he said, ‘make an excellent and very nourishing breakfast dish. Go on, get it down your neck.’

  ‘No thanks,’ grunted Hardy. ‘I’ll just have a bit of toast.’

  ‘In that case,’ Yeoman said, reaching out for Hardy’s plate and forking its contents on to his own, ‘I’ll have yours. It’s delicious, especially the burnt bits. In any case,’ he added, ‘you’re getting too fat.’

  ‘Which is surprising, considering he’s been slowly shagging himself to death for weeks now.’ Hardy’s liaison with a little WAAF section officer from Group HQ was well known to his colleagues, who ribbed him unmercifully at every opportunity.

  Hardy glared at the man on his left, Flying Officer Terry Saint, who had just spoken.

  ‘Your New Zealand twang, or drawl, or whatever the hell you choose to call it, grates on my nerves at this time of morning,’ he said. ‘It’s too early for your brand of humour.’

  He rose from the table and pushed his chair into place. As he turned to leave, Saint said:

  ‘Hey, have you heard about Snow White’s dwarfs, all sitting in the bath and feeling happy?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Happy got out!’

  Yeoman spluttered helplessly, choked on a mouthful of potato and turned red in the face. Hardy moved round the end of the table and pounded him hard on the back before disappearing in the direction of the anteroom, picking up a fresh cup of tea en route.

  ‘He smiled,’ Saint observed with mock amazement. ‘I’ll swear he smiled.’

  ‘Highly unlikely,’ commented Yeoman. He finished his — or rather Hardy’s — egg and potato and began to spread margarine and jam on a thick slice of bread. Saint looked at him and shook his head slowly.

  ‘I don’t know how you do it, boss,’ he said. ‘I honestly don’t know how you do it.’

  Yeoman wagged a finger at him. ‘The secret of a healthy life and regular habits,’ he explained, ‘is to have a good breakfast. It doesn’t matter what else you eat, as long as you get some food inside yourself at the start of the day. It gets the system going.’

  He finished his bread and jam and drained his teacup, looking at his watch.

  ‘Right,’ he said, ‘there’s still an hour before pilots’ briefing. Come on, we might as well catch the news.’

  They went into the anteroom together and found that someone had already switched on the radio. A few aircrew, all of them members of 380 Squadron, which Yeoman commanded, were slumped in armchairs reading the papers, which had just arrived. Yeoman picked up a copy of the Daily Mail and glanced at the headlines: the Russians were closing in on Odessa, the Prime Minister was at Harrogate attending a civic reception, documents captured by the Royal Ulster Constabulary allegedly showed that the Irish Republican Army was planning to co-operate with the enemy, and British fighters from an aircraft carrier had shot down an American transport aircraft over the Atlantic, mistaking it for a German Focke-Wulf Condor reconnaissance plane.

  Yeoman read the last report with interest, for he had always felt the need for accurate and fast aircraft recognition. The report mentioned that the American aircraft had apparently approached an Allied convoy, which the British naval fighters were defending, without giving the appropriate recognition signals, but to his mind this was no excuse for precipitating a tragedy. He imagined that the American transport must have been a Douglas C-54 which, he was forced to admit, bore an uncanny resemblance to the Focke-Wulf aircraft from certain angles, and since the presence of a Condor near a convoy meant that a U-boat pack was in the offing, the fighter pilots must have been understandably trigger-happy.

  Yeoman laid his newspaper aside as the deep, cultured tones of the BBC newsreader came over the air.

  ‘In the early hours of this morning, a large force of Lancasters and Halifaxes of RAF Bomber Command carried out a saturation attack on the Nazi rally city and industrial centre of Nuremberg. According to an Air Ministry communique released a little under an hour ago, ninety-four of our bombers failed to return.’

  In the brief pause that followed this fearful announcement, there was a stunned silence in the anteroom. All faces were turned towards the radio, as though willing the announcer to retract the figure he had just given. Quietly, someone said: ‘Jesus Christ!’

  Remorselessly, his voice sombre, the newsreader went on:

  ‘For most of their journey, the bombers had to battle their way through determined fighter opposition. Returning crews said that the enemy have made no greater effort to save one of their cities, not even Berlin. Although it was cloudy over most of the route, there were many clear patches with bright moonlight both on the way to the city and back.

  ‘The attack began a little after one o’clock in the morning, and the moon did not set until two. The bitterest fighting ever known since the Battle of Germany began took place while the moon lasted, and this was for two hours out of the three spent over enemy territory. Fighter packs were brought up as soon as the bombers crossed the enemy coast, and as the bombers penetrated further inland all the ground defences joined in. Vapour trails gave away the position of some of the bombers when they encountered unexpected freezing conditions at medium altitudes.

  ‘This is the biggest loss ever suffered by the RAF in a single assault…’

  The announcer moved on to other topics. Hardy suddenly swore, got up and switched off the radio.

  ‘Ninety-four…’ Terry Saint muttered. ‘God, I’ve never heard anything like it. They must have got the figures wrong.’

  Yeoman shook his head. ‘No, the figures will be right enough. If anything, they’ll be underestimated. I don’t understand how it can have happened, though.’

  ‘It happened because somebody made an almighty cock-up, that’s how!’

  The bitter voice made them all turn sharply towards the door of the anteroom. The man who stood there was big, over six feet tall, with the broad shoulders and bull neck of a rugby forward. He wore a squadron leader’s rank braid, and the row of medal ribbons under his p
ilot’s wings included the Distinguished Flying Cross. His face was pale and drawn, his fists clenched in suppressed anger.

  Yeoman had never seen Squadron Leader Clive Bowen, CO of 373 Squadron, in such a state of tension before; the big Welshman was usually soft-spoken and calm, as steady as a rock in any circumstance. Yeoman knew, however, that the Mosquito night fighters of No. 373, which shared RAF Burningham in Norfolk with his own squadron, had been out for most of the night over the Low Countries and Germany, operating in support of Bomber Command. It must really have been a nightmare out there, to produce this kind of reaction.

  ‘Hello, Clive,’ he said, as casually as possible, ‘come and join us. I thought you’d still be asleep.’

  Bowen slumped wearily into an armchair next to Yeoman and passed a hand over his eyes.

  ‘Sleep,’ he murmured. ‘Yes, I reckon I could do with a few hours. Later, maybe. Just now, I feel I could do with some tea. Wish there was some coffee.’

  ‘Rough night?’ Yeoman enquired.

  ‘God, yes, George. We saw them falling out of the sky all the way from the Dutch coast, one after another. It was sheer bloody murder, just as if the Huns knew we were coming.’

  He stared suddenly at Yeoman, his eyes haunted. ‘Maybe they did know, at that,’ he said. ‘Half-way over the North Sea my navigator and I were both convinced that we heard a transmission on the command guard frequency from one of our own aircraft. It was just a short burst of R/T, as if somebody had been talking to his crew over the intercom and had pressed the transmit button by mistake as he was in midsentence, but I’ll swear the word “Nuremberg” was mentioned. It can’t have been a figment of the imagination, not when we both thought we’d heard the same thing. And if we heard it, you can bet your boots the Huns did too.’

  Terry Saint, who had temporarily left the anteroom, now returned with a large cup of tea, which he handed to Bowen. The latter took it and nodded his thanks, smiling thinly. Then, turning back to Yeoman, he went on: ‘You know, George, some bastard on the planning staff ought to have his neck wrung. From Charleroi, the bomber stream was routed direct to Fulda — straight past two fighter assembly beacons. I think that was where they took their biggest losses. We saw the poor buggers going down in flames all over the place, and the sky was stiff with fighter flares.’

  He gave a sudden, savage grin. ‘At least the sods didn’t have it all their own way. Jimmy Collins’ — he named one of the pilots on his squadron— ‘Jimmy Collins was patrolling over Beacon Ida, near Aachen, and he got three of ’em in just about as many minutes. All single-engine jobs. They were using a lot of day fighters, George, attacking by the light of the flares. Not that they needed the flares; you could see the bombers from miles away, pulling great brilliant contrails in the moonlight. Bloody picturesque, it was,’ he said bitterly.

  Yeoman started to ask a question but was interrupted by the crackle of the tannoy on the anteroom wall above the door.

  ‘Squadron Leader Yeoman, telephone,’ it said metallically. ‘Squadron Leader Yeoman, telephone please.’

  He excused himself and went along the corridor to the little alcove that served as the officers’ mess reception, where a sleepy aircraftman handed the phone to him across the desk.

  The clipped voice on the other end of the line belonged to Group Captain Hector Davison, the Officer Commanding RAF Station Burningham.

  ‘George, can you come down to my office at once?’

  ‘All right, sir. But there’s a captains’ briefing in thirty minutes.’

  ‘Forget that,’ Davison told him. ‘It’s all been changed.’ There was a click, and the line went dead.

  Yeoman went to the cloakroom and took his cap from the peg marked OC 380 Sqn, then as an afterthought returned for his greatcoat, for an earlier glance out of his bedroom window had told him that the morning was raw and cold, with a chill mist drifting over Burningham from Methwold Fens.

  He went outside and set out on a brisk two hundred yard walk to station headquarters, the frigid air stinging his freshly-shaven face. As he walked, he realized with a sudden shock that it was now almost a year since he had taken command of 380 Squadron; a year that had seen the squadron grow in stature and experience until it was now one of the foremost units of its kind in the RAF.

  The squadron was equipped with fast de Havilland Mosquito Mk VIs, formidably armed with four 20-mm cannon and four .303 machine-guns. When operational circumstances required it, they could also carry a pair of 500-lb bombs in the rear of the bomb-bay, a useful addition when carrying out attacks on enemy airfields.

  Together, 380 Squadron and the radar-equipped Mosquito night fighters of Clive Bowen’s No. 373 formed what was known as the Burningham Wing. This, in turn, was part of No. 100 Group, an élite formation whose task was to support the RAF’s night bombing offensive by sowing confusion among the enemy defences and whose motto, appropriately, was ‘Confound and Destroy’. From relatively small beginnings in the autumn of 1943, No. 100 Group had grown to a strength of twelve operational squadrons, not counting the Bomber Support Development Unit at Foulsham in Norfolk and one or two small specialist flights. Three of the squadrons — Nos 192, 199 and 214 — were equipped with four-engined heavy bombers such as the Short Stirling, Handley Page Halifax or the American-built Boeing Fortress, all of which carried radio countermeasures equipment instead of bombs; their task was to jam the radars that directed the German night fighters. It was a highly dangerous job, for it involved circling over enemy territory in the target area for lengthy periods — and the Germans had now developed equipment that enabled their fighters to home on to some of the countermeasures radar carried by the jamming aircraft.

  The other squadrons in the Group were equipped with Mosquitos. Most of them were intruders, their mission to range far and wide over Germany and Occupied Europe under cover of darkness, either swooping down to strike at enemy airfields or patrolling the German fighter assembly beacons in search of worthwhile targets.

  380 Squadron, on the other hand, was a day fighter-bomber unit. Its Mosquitos were not fitted with radar; their role was to carry out pinpoint precision attacks against targets within the German air defence framework — airfields and radar stations, for example — which were held by British Intelligence to be of particular importance.

  It could be a costly business. On one fearful day in December 1943, during an attack on the airfield at Bad Zwischenahn, where the Germans were testing new and secret rocket fighters, the squadron had lost eight out of sixteen Mosquitos.

  That had been the worst day of all; but this was war, and there had been no time to dwell on losses, however tragic. Under Yeoman’s leadership the survivors had welded together the nucleus of a new 380 Squadron, a nucleus of wise, battle-hardened veterans who were examples in every way to the young men who came to replace those who had been lost.

  Yeoman thought of them with great affection. Flight Lieutenants Rory McManners and Tim Sloane, his flight commanders, were directly under him in the chain of command; he would lose them both soon, for they had only a few sorties left to fly before their operational tours expired. Terry Saint was in line to replace one of them, while the other’s place would eventually be taken by Captain Yves Romilly of the Free French Air Force.

  Of the original team which had formed 380 Squadron back in the spring of 1943, only one other pilot, South African Flight Sergeant Chris Lorrimer, remained. Three others — Warrant Officer Arthur Laurie, a Canadian, and two Sergeant Pilots named Hudson and Carr — had joined the squadron later, and had survived the Zwischenahn attack. All the others were newcomers, posted in January 1944 to make good the losses.

  That fateful December day had also left Burningham without a wing commander, for the previous one, Charles Rothbury, had been shot down and taken prisoner. The new man, Bentley, had been a single-seat pilot, having flown Gladiators and Hurricanes in the Middle East and later commanded a squadron of Hawker Typhoons. There was a certain amount of friction between Bentley and
Yeoman, but for the life of him Yeoman could not account for it. It was nothing as strong as mutual dislike: in fact, there were times when Yeoman even enjoyed Bentley’s company over a game of darts and a pint of beer in the mess. Perhaps, Yeoman thought, it was nothing more than a subconscious childish resentment that he himself had not been given command of the wing.

  He reached station headquarters and went inside, treading the well-worn path along the corridor that lead to the CO’s office. He had to pass through the adjutant’s office first; the adjutant, Flight Lieutenant Rees, had not yet come on duty, but his deputy, a formidable Flight Sergeant, knocked on Davison’s door and announced Yeoman’s arrival.

  On entering, Yeoman had the incredible feeling that he had suddenly been flung back in time. The scene in the office was almost exactly the same as that which had confronted him eight months earlier, on the morning when — on its return from an armament practice camp — 380 Squadron had been declared fully operational. Group Captain Hector Davison, DSO, MC, was seated behind his desk, his eyes as steely as ever over the top of his half-moon glasses, while the man who sat in an armchair opposite, a teacup raised to his lips, had also been present on that other occasion.

  ‘Good morning, George,’ Davison said in that clipped voice of his. ‘You remember Air Commodore Sampson?’

  ‘Indeed I do, sir,’ Yeoman replied, shaking the senior officer’s hand. On his last visit to Burningham, Sampson had been a group captain. Promotion prospects must be good in the Air Ministry’s Directorate of Operations, thought Yeoman, for Sampson was still in his thirties. Nevertheless, the man had a distinguished career behind him, and he wore the ribbon of the VC, awarded for leading a virtual suicide attack in a Blenheim bomber in daylight earlier in the war.

  ‘Well, Yeoman,’ the Air Commodore said, ‘your squadron has been doing quite well for itself, by all accounts.’

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ the younger man answered. ‘We like to think so.’