Bomber. Len Deighton

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       Chapter Two

      ‘One thing about these short summer nights,’ an elderly Wing Commander said, ‘we can usually shortlist the target files and have them in the old man’s hands the moment he makes the decision.’

      Nora Ashton, the young WAAF officer, smiled at him briefly and then went back to checking the target files. Each one had been started on orders from the Targets Selection Committee at Air Ministry. She identified each file by its code name: Whitebait was Berlin and Trout was Cologne. The code names were the idea of the Senior Staff Officer, who was a keen angler. Recently he had taken up collecting butterflies and moths but the C-in-C said that code names like Broad-bordered Bee Hawk would be inconvenient. Inside each target file there were population figures, industrial descriptions, photos and intelligence about searchlights and guns. The files varied a great deal: some files were as fat as phone directories and packed with reports from resistance workers and secret agents, while many contained little that didn’t appear in a prewar city guide. Others were contradictory or out of date, and some were so thin that they scarcely existed at all. In each file there was a record of Bomber Command’s previous attacks.

      ‘The Ruhr tonight,’ said the elderly Wing Commander. ‘I’ll bet you my morning tea-break: Essen or Cologne.’

      ‘What, on my wages?’ said the WAAF officer. ‘When you buy three or four sticky buns.’

      He shrugged. ‘You would have lost.’

      Quickly she picked up a newspaper and turned to the astrology section. Under Aries it said, ‘Someone dear to you will make a journey. Financial affairs promising.’ She folded it and pushed it into the drawer.

      She said, ‘Some day I’ll take you up on one of your bets. Anyway, look at the moon chart. After the casualties we’ve had on recent light nights they might decide a full moon is too dangerous.’

      ‘Too dangerous for some ops,’ said the Wing Commander, ‘but the Ruhr looks messy on radar screens. Moonlight gives a visual identification of the target. If the Met man predicts some cloud cover they’ll go, and the Ruhr’s the only logical target.’

      The girl looked up and nodded agreement. It was 09.05 hours; another hour and a half before morning tea-break.

      She said, ‘What was the weather like when you came in, sir?’

      ‘Quite delightful, a perfect summer’s day – not a cloud in the sky.’

      ‘I do hope so,’ said the WAAF officer. ‘Last night I had to get out of bed and close the window. The rain came down in torrents.’ She had planned to have her hair done that afternoon: rain would ruin it.

      ‘My garden needed the rain.’

      ‘So did the Met people: they’d been forecasting it every day for a week.’

      Neither of them raised their eyes to the Met map on the wall where was written the finest weather prediction that money and daring could provide. Each hour it was amended according to reports from weather stations, aeroplanes, and ships at sea.

      There was certainly no indication of prevailing weather conditions from inside this underground Operations Room, known to its inmates as ‘the hole’. The air was clean and at constant temperature and the bright lights shone unchanging night and day. Here arrived the strategic requirements from Churchill’s Cabinet War Room and from Air Ministry. From here went the orders that sent four or five thousand airmen into a three-dimensional night battle over Germany.

      Every square foot of wall space was crammed with information. At desks around it sat the top brass of Bomber Command, an awe-inspiring array of rank. An Army officer sat near a hot line to the C-in-C Home Forces and a naval captain clutched an armful of Enemy Shipping reports. Two American officers had small change spread across a desk top while a WAAF officer explained for the third time that thirty of these big coins made half a crown. ‘Then what makes a whole crown?’

      ‘Nothing makes a whole crown,’ said his colleague, ‘it’s like saying what makes a bit. Two bits may be a quarter but you can’t have a bit.’

      ‘I think I’ve got it,’ said the first American doubtfully.

      At this moment the SASO (Senior Air Staff Officer) and the Group Captain i/c Operations began to give the C-in-C a summary of the previous night’s bombing of Germany. All eyes were on the thirty-foot-wide blackboard upon which the previous night’s objectives and orders were chalked in yellow and results added in red.

      Even as they spoke a sergeant climbed the ladder and altered the Failed to Return tally from 26 to 25. ‘What’s that make it?’ asked the C-in-C.

      ‘Four point five per cent.’

      ‘Not bad, I was expecting worse.’

      ‘What are we going to get tonight?’ the Met man was asked.

      ‘Here are the predicted positions of the fronts for midnight. Well-broken cloud all along the north-west coast but clear from Hamburg northwards. Residual thundercloud with thunderstorms near the cold front.’

      ‘The Ruhr?’ The elderly Wing Commander heard the C-in-C’s question to the Met man and nodded significantly.

      The Met man shuffled his notes. ‘At present thunderstorms are moving across the Rhine with this cold front but they will clear by this afternoon. Midnight: thin layer of medium cloud somewhere between 1,000 and 20,000 feet but it will probably have gone by 01.00 hours. There’s a chance of a little stratocumulus at 2,000 to 3,000 feet. Expected visibility moderate.’

      ‘What about Northern France?’

      ‘Fine; moderate visibility. Well-broken layer cloud in north-west.’

      ‘And the weather over UK for the aircraft’s return?’

      ‘Fine. A little stratocumulus at 2,000 or 3,000 feet. Excellent visibility.’

      The C-in-C walked slowly across the highly polished floor to look at the quarter-inch map of Northern Europe that almost covered one wall. Each of the target towns was marked by a colour-coded reference on a flat pin. He looked back towards the moon chart, then moved nearer СКАЧАТЬ