jump while he held the aircraft steady. Three got out alive. The other three went down with their skipper.
The bombers landed at their home bases between noon and two o’clock. Because of the battering it had received, Q-Queenie was excused joining the queue of aircraft circling the base and given permission to land at once. Ron Adams made a smooth touchdown and taxied to dispersal where they were met by the ground crew eager to hear their adventures and dispensing cigarettes. After eight hours without a smoke, Fred Whitfield remembered, the first puff ‘was pure nectar’.21 When, in bomber bases up and down the east of England, the crews sat down to be debriefed by station intelligence officers, the same observation was repeated over and over. During the entire eight-hour trip they had not seen a single German aeroplane.
The exploit covered the front pages of the following day’s newspapers. ‘Hitler’s Chalet Wrecked’ was the headline in The Times. The Daily Express lead announced: ‘Hitler Bombed Out – 5-tonners right on der Fuhrer’s house’, adding that ‘Berchtesgaden was the target that every bomber pilot had longed to attack for nearly six years’.
Nobody asked why it had never been hit before now. Nor was the military usefulness of the exercise questioned. The truth was that the Berghof had been mentioned frequently when target lists were being drawn up but had always been rejected. Allied intelligence knew about the deep bomb shelters dug to protect the leadership and reckoned the negative publicity of a failed attempt to finish Hitler was not worth the effort. Later the calculation changed. The fear now was that the bombers might succeed, and the defence of Germany would pass to the hands of someone more competent and rational.
On 25 April 1945, with Hitler’s empire reduced to a few square miles in the heart of a burning city, there was less reason than ever to attack Berchtesgaden with such extravagant force. None was offered. The raid on Hitler’s mountain retreat was an overwhelmingly British operation, in conception and execution, with American aircraft playing only a secondary role. Its purpose was thus symbolic and the message was from Britain to the world. Hitler had started the war, and it was the British alone who had stood out against him. It had taken a great coalition to defeat him but without that initial defiance there might have been no victory. Smashing Berchtesgaden was a reminder of that truth. It was fitting that it was the Royal Air Force that delivered the blow.
2
One afternoon in the middle of the war Group Captain Arnold Wall sat down to tea and biscuits with Lord Trenchard, who was revered as the ‘Father of the Royal Air Force’. Wall taught at the RAF Staff College and was preparing a lecture on the early history of the service. Among the questions he had for the great man were two that were ‘pretty trivial’, but which he ‘felt personal curiosity about’.1 The first was how it was that the RAF got its famous blue uniform.
There were ‘two legends about this, both picturesque’ in circulation, and he hoped Trenchard might be able to settle the matter once and for all. One claimed that in 1917 the textile mills of Bradford had received an order to weave a million yards or so of light blue cloth for the Tsar of Russia’s cavalry. After the October Revolution, this was left on their hands. Thus, when the RAF officially came into being on 1 April 1918, there was a vast stock of surplus material going cheap that suited their requirements.
In the other version, the staff officer charged with choosing the colour was the beau of a musical comedy star named Lily Elsie, famous for starring in the London version of The Merry Widow. When samples were brought to him for a decision he decided to consult his girlfriend. ‘This is it,’ she is alleged to have replied, picking out the shade that the RAF has worn ever since, ‘because it matches the colour of my eyes.’ Trenchard was ‘most apologetic’ but could throw no light on the matter.
On the second subject – the origin of the RAF ensign – he was more helpful, saying ‘Yes, yes. I can tell you something about that.’ Trenchard recalled his staff coming to him with a sketch of the design. It featured the RAF red, white and blue roundel, originally devised to deter trigger-happy Tommies from blasting at friendly aircraft from their trenches, set on a sky-blue background. They warned him, however, that the Royal College of Heralds had ruled the roundels unacceptable as they were ‘not heraldry’. Trenchard resolved to take the matter up with the King. On his next meeting with him he brought the design along and explained the difficulty. ‘Well, Trenchard,’ said George V, ‘if it wasn’t heraldry before, it will be from now on.’ And he signed the drawing there and then.
Lily Elsie (Everett Collection Inc/Alamy Stock Photo)
The ensign anecdote sounds plausible enough. Trenchard was not the man to make up a tale about his sovereign. The truth of the origin of Air Force Blue remains obscure, though gossip certainly favoured the second version. John Slessor, who went on to be one of the outstanding figures of the wartime RAF, recalled being summoned one evening in October 1918 with other senior officers to a meeting in Salisbury to discuss sending reinforcements to France where the Germans were in full retreat. Before the main business began there was some light relief. Mark Kerr, a former senior naval officer who had switched to the Air Force, was to model the first uniform. As Kerr stepped forward into the light of a reading lamp in the new rig, the audience reacted with mirth and incredulity. ‘[It] was terrible,’ Slessor recalled, ‘a nasty pale blue with a lot of gold all over it, which brought irresistibly to mind the gentleman who stands outside the cinema.’2 He reported that ‘rumour had it that it was a joint design by Mark Kerr and Miss Lily Elsie, though I’m sure that this was a libel on a beautiful and talented lady who has far too good taste ever to have been party to such an atrocity. Fortunately, it was short lived …’
These foundation stories say much about how the RAF saw itself – and how it wanted others to see it – in the first years of its existence. Unpicking the Russian story – the yarn about the yarn – reveals some enduring components of the RAF image. One is an aura of romance. The Air Force was being linked to what was traditionally the most dashing arm of the military. The message was that aviators were the aerial equivalent of the cavalry, bold, colourful and brimming with elan, éclat and all the other French words that go with sabre-wielding men on horseback. But there is also a suggestion that they were the target of some resentment from their dowdier colleagues. The implication was that the authorities had decided that, rather than weave a new cloth for the new service, they would have to make do with a quartermaster’s windfall.
The second version reinforces the element of romance and introduces a raffish note. Lily Elsie was a big star of the day whose picture was plastered over mass-circulation illustrated papers. She was also married (as was Mark Kerr). Perhaps significantly, her playboy husband’s fortune came from a family business that made textile machines. Here the RAF is presented as the sort of outfit that has in its upper ranks officers who hang out with beautiful celebrities. The tale gives the impression of modernity and a devil-may-care attitude to traditional proprieties.
Without stretching things too far, the ensign anecdote also carries a subtext. In this submerged narrative, the infant service, whose values are illustrated in an attractive and innovative design, runs up against the dreary forces of tradition in the form of the heralds. But where there’s a will there’s a way and help is at hand from an unusual quarter. Young and brash the newcomers may be, but the King recognizes them for the loyal liegemen that they are. At a stroke the hindrance is removed. There will be plenty more obstacles across their path in the
