Cover of Darkness: The Memoir of a World War Two Night-Fighter by Roderick Chisholm

Author:Roderick Chisholm [Chisholm, Roderick]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Sapere Books
Published: 2020-07-05T00:00:00+00:00

Part Two: Attack

Chapter 13: The Bombers

OUR bomber raids were now massive and concentrated. Forces of many hundred four-engined aircraft operated whenever the weather allowed, and the scale of attack was mounting. Sometimes they would go out over Ford and often they would land back there. It was not uncommon for twenty or thirty of them to come in, diverted from their own bases because of bad weather. Amongst them were always some lame ducks scrambling in somehow and ending up through a hedge with no brakes, or prone with an undercarriage that collapsed or would not come down, or by good fortune on their wheels and neatly parked near the perimeter track awaiting the repair squads. Sometimes there was a disaster and a machine, already home, crashed for reasons unknown and without survivors.

The Nazis were being hit hard and in the only way open to us. The brave policy of the four-engined weight-lifting bombers was very appropriate to the war at this stage. They went out at night unescorted, using the dark as their cover as the enemy had done, and their losses in these relatively early days, though mounting, were not excessive. Opposing defences were being built up, and the enemy had more leeway to make up than we had had (one wonders if it had ever seriously occurred to the Nazis that they might one day have to fight in the air at night).

We, the night-fighter boys, had been accustomed to being, as we thought, in the centre of the stage. We had, in fact, been there for a time after the Battle of Britain, when the miracle of airborne radar had given our city dwellers new hope. We had enjoyed the prominence. Who would not? And like superannuated prima donnas, we preserved the belief that we were still in the limelight; but now the signs of change were too many to be ignored. There was more doing than defence.

A November night and the following morning in 1942 were, to me, significant. We had a programme of trial flying which involved much scrutiny and peering between one aircraft and another; a cloudless sky would have been the best conditions for it. A gloomy weather forecaster gave a discouraging picture of the weather; the trials were in consequence cancelled and we went to the mess. It was at about eleven o’clock when I heard several aircraft going overhead; the noise soon increased to a thunder and then died away to the spasmodic outbreaks of the stragglers. A raid was going out in weather I had readily denounced as unfit for our trials. Local weather was then clear, and needing to restore our self-respect we reinstituted our programme and flew, but unsuccessfully.

I was lying in bed next morning half awake, feeling satisfied that we had in the end done all we could the night before. Suddenly I was jerked into full consciousness. There was an aircraft close and it sounded as if it was coming over the mess. I looked out of the window at a grey wall of drizzle, and cloud at 200 or 300 hundred feet.

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