A Night to Remember -part 8
ONWARD and upward the steady drone goes on, with the regular scan of the instruments and the night outside punctuated at regular intervals by the crew check. Everybody is fully occupied with their own job and their own deep inner thoughts. The Special back in the fuselage is busy with his cathode-ray tube, searching the frequencies for directions to German night fighters from their controllers so that he can jam them with one of his three transmitters.
“Searchlights and flak ahead on the port bow skipper!” “OK bombaimer, it looks like somebody has wandered off to port of track and is getting a reception from Rotterdam. Are we on track navigator?” “Navigator to pilot, the Gee says we’re bang on and the signal’s pretty good so far.” “Good show navigator”. ”Pilot to bombaimer, see if you can get a fix on the Dutch coast, it should be just about visible and we should be there in three minutes” “OK skip”. “Pilot to gunners, keep your eyes open chaps, it looks as though they know we’re coming now”. Midupper, OK skip. Rear gunner, OK skipper. “Pilot to Special, any activity in your department yet?” “ Hello skipper, Special here, no, it all seems quite quiet at the moment, no doubt it will liven up soon.” “OK Special, keep us informed.”
My eyes sweep the green glowing instruments, again and again, then into the inky black sky, all OK, just saw another sparkle of exploding anti-aircraft fire ahead. It looks quite pretty from here, but it won’t when we get nearer.
“Bombaimer to skipper, I can just see the Dutch coast coming up now, I’ll give you a fix when we cross ..... now! 34 and a half on the tip of Overflakkee and I’m glad that it’s not living up to its name at the moment” “So am I bombaimer, it all looks very quiet, that could mean that there are Jerry night fighters about, keep your eyes open gunners”. “Pilot to navigator, did you get that?” “OK skip, we’re on track and 30 seconds late. Turn onto one zero two compass, ETA turning point is on the hour”. “Roger navigator, one zero two compass and on the hour”.
Over occupied territory now and right over a whole nest of night-fighter airfields, but so far all seems to be quiet, time for another crew check, all OK. I slowly become conscious of a beat developing in the steady drone of the engines as they become slightly unsynchronised, a quick check of the engine instruments shows that the starboard inner has dropped a few revs. The flight engineer leans forward, he has spotted it too, he checks the boost and temperature gauges and gives me a thumbs-up sign and a shrug of the shoulders. “Could be a little icing in the carb skip” “OK I’ll adjust the throttles, but keep your eyes on it”. With a slight adjustment of the pitch levers the engines revert to their steady drone. “Engineer to pilot, fuel consumption is fine, just changing to number 2 tanks” - “OK engineer.”
The monotonous drone is broken by a crackle on the intercom as somebody switches on their microphone. “Navigator to pilot, we’re about 3 miles to port of track, alter course to one one zero compass for the turning point.” “Pilot to navigator, one one zero compass it is, we’re levelling out at 21,000” “OK skipper 21,000, the wind seems to be a bit more southerly up here”. “Midupper to pilot, Lancaster on the starboard beam about 300 feet above us” “OK Midupper, keep you eyes on him, we will probably converge on him with this new heading” -- “OK skip”