Heroes: The Greatest Generation and the Second World War. James Holland

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СКАЧАТЬ during the Battle of Berlin, which lasted from November to the end of March 1944, were particularly high – 1,128 Allied bombers were shot down during this period, a staggering number. Yet every time they went out on a ‘war’, Bill and his crew miraculously seemed to make it back in one piece. ‘Once you’d done five or six,’ said Bill Morison, ‘your chances were improved, but you could still get shot down at any time. The fact that you were a very experienced crew didn’t guarantee anything.’ On 24 May 1944, the squadron took part in an attack on the German town of Aachen. Fifteen aircraft took off, Z for Zebra included, and made it safely to the target. There was little flak – the raid appeared to be one of their more straightforward missions, but on the return home, they came under repeated attack by night-fighters, and three of the squadron’s Halifaxes were shot down. All those lost had been experienced crews, the backbone of the squadron for many months. One had even been on their last mission – had they made it back to Leeming, their tour of duty would have been over.

      Yet although Z for Zebra continued to make it back almost unscathed, these missions were not without incident for the crew. On one occasion Bill had thought they would never even manage to get airborne. There had been a strong crosswind and the aircraft had started to swing so badly as they hurtled down the runway that he’d thought he would lose control and flip the plane. Another time one of his port engines caught fire almost as soon as they’d left the ground. It was 30 March 1944, and they were due to bomb Nuremberg.

      ‘That was scary,’ he admitted. ‘Fire in the air like that is scary. You can’t just land again – not with all those bombs and full tanks of fuel.’ A pipe had burst and petrol was spewing everywhere. Bill had to cut the engine immediately, but ahead was a small hill and with a quarter of their power gone, it looked as though they were not going to get enough lift and so fly straight into it. Somehow, though, he managed to clear it, and was able to get to the North Sea and discard his bomb load. He still had to burn off much of the fuel, so circled for a couple of hours before finally turning back to Leeming. They’d had a lucky escape. The girls in the control tower thought they must have crashed and so when he called up and gave his call-sign, ‘Must We’, they thought they were talking to a ghost.

      Landing was potentially more dangerous than taking off. Although they never flew in formation, aircraft could frequently land within minutes of each other. Often the Halifaxes would be damaged, and were nearly always low on fuel. ‘One night my hydraulics were shot away and I couldn’t use the flaps and even the undercarriage didn’t want to come down.’ This was where experience came in. Bill eventually got the wheels down by diving the aircraft and then pulling back up; the force of gravity eventually locked them into place. Even so, without flaps, he hit the ground at 170 knots rather than 130. ‘I went off the end of the runway,’ he said.

      Having finally landed and switched off the engines, a van would arrive and take them off for debriefing. There was coffee and a slug of rum, but Bill never touched either. Back then, he was not a great drinker. ‘I can make an ass of myself without drinking,’ he says, ‘that’s the way I look at it.’ The Intelligence Officer would ask them about the mission. What did they see? Were they attacked? What was their view over the target? Each of the Halifaxes had a camera. As soon as the bombs were released they would take pictures, with the fourth snapping as the bombs hit the ground. ‘You couldn’t come back and say, “We definitely hit the target.” You had to wait for the pictures to be developed for that.’ Bill tells me about the time one aircraft went out on a mission then flew up and down the North Sea. Unbeknown to the pilot, he was being tracked by British radar and when he returned had not taken any pictures either. ‘He was scared. There were people…sometimes people broke down.’ Not that Bill ever saw anyone really fall to pieces. Those suffering from shattered nerves were whisked away off the station immediately, before the other men could see. ‘LMF,’ said Bill. ‘That’s what they called it. Lack of Moral Fibre. But you could only take so much; everyone will break down after a while.’

      But not Bill, despite chalking up over thirty missions in ten months of front-line duty. ‘I was lucky. A very lucky pilot,’ he told me. One time, they were flying over Germany. It was quite dark – they were nowhere near their target – when tracer started streaming past and cannon shell bursts exploded in front of them. They’d been picked up by radar and now had a night-fighter attacking them. Bill immediately changed course, weaving back and forth as shells continued to explode either side of him. In the end he was forced to ‘corkscrew’ and eventually managed to shake off the enemy fighter. Another time they were flying over a city and flak – anti-aircraft shell bursts – began exploding all around. A near explosion could severely jolt the aircraft, but on this occasion Bill had just dropped his bombs and had selected the bomb doors to close, when the flak burst beneath them and flipped the Halifax onto its back. ‘The gyro was telling me I was upside-down, and we were falling fast, so I immediately rolled out of it.’ But they were still in a dive, with the airspeed indicator pointing at over 300 miles per hour, far in excess of the Halifax’s maximum speed. ‘I thought, “I’d better not pull out too fast or I’ll pull the wings off,” so I kept the throttle back and let her slow down a bit.’ Eventually they levelled out and began climbing once more. But in that short space of time, they’d dropped around 5,000 feet. ‘I heard a hell of a noise from the airplane, but the strangest thing was we suffered no damage at all. We checked everything. The crew had been holding their breath and I heard a loud “Pheww!” once everything had been ticked off.’ Bill chuckles. Another time they came back and there were 173 holes in the plane. But they’d still made it home.

      They could often be in the air for long periods of time, especially if flying to Germany and back. Not only did he have to concentrate on piloting and be ready to take evasive action at any moment, he had to do so in freezing temperatures. At the kind of height they were operating from – and the higher they flew the safer they were and the better the engines ran – temperatures could drop to fifty below. ‘There was heat coming off the engine,’ said Bill, ‘but no insulation. When it’s that cold, you soon feel it.’ He always wore silk underwear, silk gloves and a long white silk scarf under his flying jacket, so managed to keep his upper body warm enough. The problem was his feet, with which he operated the rudder. ‘Most of the time, I couldn’t really feel them.’ Despite the length of some journeys and the mental and physical exhaustion these missions entailed, he rarely felt too tired to fly. ‘If I did, I’d open the side window and that cold air would slap me round the face.’

      As well as relieving himself before he got into the plane, he also always needed to go as they began the bomb run. ‘It was strange. I’ve never had the strongest kidneys, but I’d have to pull out and pee into this pipe. It led straight out and would just suck out the moisture. So I peed on every German city I flew over…’

      What about dropping bombs on civilians? I ask him. ‘You don’t think about the people getting hit,’ he said. ‘I didn’t build the airplanes; I didn’t build the bombs; I didn’t gas them – I just went there and back – the guilt was shared by all of us, you know.’ He paused again, then said, ‘You can’t help but feel a certain amount – well, you wished it never happened, at any rate. You can’t divorce yourself from it because you had something to do with it, but I don’t feel responsible for the whole thing.’

      

      On D-Day, he and his crew took part in their first-ever daylight mission. Nearly a thousand of Bomber Command’s aircraft were directed against the Normandy coastal batteries. Crossing the Channel as dawn was breaking, navigator Bill Morison suddenly noticed hundreds of white blips on his H2S radar set. Informing his skipper, they soon after saw the sea full of ships from one end of the horizon to the other. Like everyone else, they had been kept in the dark about exactly when the landings would be. Despite this exciting bird’s eye view of the invasion, they found the experience unsettling. In order to improve their accuracy, they flew over the target at 10,000 feet, far lower than they were used to. ‘There were not many enemy fighters,’ recalled Bill Morison, ‘but the flak was definitely a problem.’

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