The Last British Dambuster by George Johnny Johnson

Author:George Johnny Johnson
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: RAF, Autobiography, World War II, Non-Fiction, Historical, Biography
ISBN: 9780091957759
Publisher: Ebury Press
Published: 2014-05-07T23:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 8

THE DEBRIEF AND A RETURN TO THE SORPE

AFTER MOST OTHER raids, we were still talking too loudly when we bundled into the debriefing room. We’d left Chuck-Chuck way out at dispersal, but we could all still hear her engines throbbing in our ears. It took some time for that to settle down. At the debrief we gathered round to be offered a mug of tea with a tot of rum in it. I declined the rum, but the tea went down a treat, especially if it came with a biscuit or two.

Then it was down to business. We tended to be interviewed as a crew, one crew at a time, with an Intelligence Officer, often a WAAF, firing questions at us over our tea, biscuits and cigarettes. There were routine, set questions to be asked about the journey to the target, the flak and night fighters along the way, whether we found our way there without too much difficulty … that sort of thing. As far as the bombing itself was concerned, they needed to know if the PFF had marked the bombing area clearly and if we managed to drop our bombs on target. Had we seen any other aircraft being hit? Did our gunners engage any enemy aircraft? Lots of notes were taken, presumably so that they could piece together everything that had happened on the raid and work out what might have happened to some of those who didn’t come home.

Usually the debrief didn’t take too long. You couldn’t really skip over the details, but we were all exhausted and keen to get off to bed. The worst thing was if you had landed away from the airfield for any reason. If you were miles away, in Cornwall or somewhere, you’d scrounge a bed for the night and fly home the next day, but, if you were close by, they would stick you on a truck and send you back to Scampton. We might have had five or six hours in the air and then have to spend an hour in the back of a truck before sitting down to the debrief when all we really wanted to do was to get to bed. That was a pain. Once we were finished with the debrief, I might try to see if there was any food on the go, but I usually headed for bed. You could count on being dog-tired after an op and, although it could take a while to wind down enough to get to sleep, bed was the best place for me. We would be up again later that morning and, although we were unlikely to be back on an op that night, we might well be doing a training flight or an air test later in the day. There was no thought of that right now, though. Just relax and hit the hay.

Depending on what time we had arrived home, I’d be up for breakfast the following morning. During the winter, we

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