presented his plan to his senior staff and advisers in the operations room at High Wycombe later that morning, advocating a straight run to Nuremberg. His Deputy Commander-in-Chief, Robert Saundby, kept his concerns to himself until the meeting was over. His boss was not a man to cross in public; many even questioned the wisdom of doing so in private. ‘He was generally acknowledged to be a grim man who could freeze an Eskimo with a look; a man of explosive temperament; a man of few words – all of them forceful.’31 Saundby also knew that Harris did not take his decisions lightly, only too aware that each time he signed off on a raid it meant thousands of men would be risking their lives.
When they managed to speak, Saundby expressed his reservations about the ‘straight run-in’ to Nuremberg, though whether this refers to the long leg or the bombing run after the turning point is unclear. Harris ‘thought for a moment, then grunted – and those knowing him will appreciate how effective those grunts could be. He said he would wait to see the result of the afternoon’s Met Report.’
Saundby remained uneasy, but on his shoulders fell the task of finding the best route to and from the target. A straight route meant easier navigation, shorter flying time, less fuel and more bombs, though it also gave the Germans a better chance to plot their course and ambush the bomber stream. An indirect route increased the chances of aircraft going off course and meant more time in the air and a lighter bomb load.
Air Vice-Marshal Donald Bennett, chief of the Pathfinder Force, was also concerned. He called Saundby to propose a more deviating course. Saundby listened carefully and canvassed the opinions of the other group commanders before coming to a final decision: the direct route it would be. The order was sent to Harris for approval, and once that was gained it was transmitted by telex across 39 air bases throughout eastern England, from North Yorkshire to East Anglia. Approximately 1,000 aircraft and 6,500 men would be part of the operation, which had been given the codename Grayling.
The bombers would take off at approximately 10 p.m. to make use of the forecast cloud cover and avoid being caught in moonlight. The stream would assemble over the North Sea, then fly over the enemy coast and into Belgium, going west of Brussels. Charleroi marked the start of the perilous 265-mile straight leg south of the Ruhr.
Four ‘spoof’ raids involving 162 aircraft would be launched as diversions, and to camouflage the primary target for as long as possible. Fifty Halifax bombers would head for the North Sea, to give the impression of a much larger force threatening Hamburg or Berlin, then drop mines in the Heligoland Bight, a bay at the mouth of the River Elbe. Three separate forces of Mosquitoes would head for Aachen, Cologne and Kassel, where they would drop target indicator flares as if for a full-scale attack, designed to draw the enemy fighters away from the main stream.
At the end of the straight leg, the stream was to take an abrupt southerly turn 79 miles north of Nuremberg. Within 19 minutes of altering course it would be over the target, giving the Germans little time to react. Until then, Frankfurt, Stuttgart, even Munich, might still be the target.
The aiming point was a railway goods depot south of the centre of Nuremberg, to compensate for any ‘creep back’ – the fires started by the first bombs to be dropped were often used as the aiming point by subsequent crews; they would release their load as soon as the blaze below came into their sights, and as each successive wave bombed the nearest ‘edge’ of the fire it crept further away from the target. The setting of the moon would give them the cloak of darkness for their five-hour return journey against the forecast headwinds.
Zero Hour was set at 1.10 a.m. on 31 March. Five minutes before that the Pathfinders would start marking with flares to illuminate the area, so their fellow Mosquitoes and Lancasters could release their target indicator bombs on the aiming point, and the last bomber would drop its load at 1.22. The entire 68-mile-long stream, arriving in five waves behind the opening Pathfinder force, would have 12 minutes to carry out the attack – at a rate of 57 aircraft per minute. If the winds en route held up the progress of the stream, Zero Hour could be adjusted.
In those 12 minutes the objective was to drop 2,600 tonnes of explosives on Nuremberg, half of which were incendiaries. In later raids the bomb load increased – 3,900 tonnes would be dropped on Dresden in February 1945 – but it was still significantly more than the 500 tonnes the Luftwaffe had rained on Coventry in November 1940.
As Sam Harris woke that morning in Elsham Wolds, a warm spring still seemed a distant promise. Two of his crew, Eric and Mac, had already gone for breakfast. He and the others sat in bed smoking cigarettes, summoning the will to exchange the warmth of their beds for the chilly floor of the hut and the freezing dash to the ablutions hut to shave with cold water. No one had lit the coke stove around which they had chosen their beds on their arrival in January. The stove usually warmed the whole hut; they even used the outside of it to toast bread ‘obtained’ from the mess. One night it got so hot that it ignited Chalky’s blanket.
Their hut nestled in the corner of a field, down a narrow dirt track, a bike ride away from the mess and the other squadron buildings. This seclusion had its benefits; nipping under the coke compound fence to steal extra supplies for the stove was one. Otherwise, their meagre ration only gave them an hour or so of heat. But on mornings like this the squadron office and the NAAFI wagon with its delicious sticky buns and steaming mugs of tea seemed a long way away.
Eventually they climbed on to their bicycles and set off, their breath billowing in the cold air as they pedalled. The morning cuppa and bun had become an essential part of their routine over the course of the last three months and 10 completed ops. That morning Ken Murray decided they should practise a few drills aboard their aircraft. The idea was not universally popular, given the weather, but they all knew that preparation was as important as luck in determining their chances of survival. They cycled grudgingly across to their Lancaster, G-George, eager to get back to the warmth of the mess before all the newspapers had been claimed and the crosswords completed.
Lancasters were never warm, and as they went through their drills that morning it felt even more arctic inside their plane than it did outside. They had come a long way with G-George since the January morning when they first encountered her. First impressions had not been promising. Someone had painted 84 yellow bombs beneath the pilot’s position on the port side to mark each completed trip, and the rest of the ageing veteran’s outer skin was crisscrossed with patches covering the plethora of holes, gouges and scrapes from the flak. Inside it was dirty, scruffy, unkempt and unloved. She had been inherited from 103 Squadron, who shared Elsham, because no one wanted her.
As a member of the ground crew first showed them around, he announced with a grin that because they were a new crew no one expected them to last long, so there was little point in wasting a new aircraft on them. No one laughed. Ken had bristled. ‘We’ll show you what a new crew can do,’ he said.
Their first couple of ops hadn’t endeared the plane to them. She was slow to climb, her auto-pilot was unreliable and she needed a longer take-off distance than any other Lancaster on the squadron. Mac called her ‘horrible, ancient’, and Ken was so fed up that he complained to their Commanding Officer. The response was similar to the line they got from the ground crew, minus the humour: ‘A sprog crew doesn’t expect to get a new Lancaster. You’ll be lucky to last five trips.’
Against the run of the dice they had survived the ill-fated raid on Leipzig; they overshot the target because of the winds and flew back with bombers being shot out of the sky all around them. At that point it occurred to them that, for all its discomforts, this old girl knew how to get back from an op, and from that moment they started to love their creaking but reliable Lancaster. They lived with the constant awareness that an aircraft could be their coffin, but they knew a good one could be their saviour.
While the night veiled many of her flaws, G-George always looked older and more frayed in the cold light of dawn, and this morning was no exception. She looked
