A Night to Remember -- part 14
One hour 30 min fuel remaining, but it’s one hour 50 to base
“PILOT to crew, OK chaps we’ve now got three engines again which should get us home alright if we are careful with the fuel. We are 10,000 ft, well below the bomber stream and we can’t afford the fuel to climb up and anyway we’re not really sure where we are. All the guns are out of action and it looks as though we have lost all our hydraulics, so keep your eyes skinned for fighters.
“Rear gunner to pilot, my eyes are smarting and I’m soaked in bloody petrol”. “Pilot to rear gunner, I think that some of the fuel we lost has been sucked into your turret, hang in there as long as you can”. “OK skipper”. “Navigator to pilot, I can’t get a fix on anything and I’m not sure exactly where we are so hang onto 297 until we can get a fix”. “Pilot to navigator Roger, 297 it is”. “Pilot to engineer, let’s reduce the power to zero boost and 2000 revs, that should give us about 160 at this height”.
The engine notes become softer and return to the steady drone as the engineer adjusts the pitch controls to synchronize the remaining three engines. All appears quiet and very black outside as the airspeed settles to 160. “Navigator to pilot, at this speed, it should be just over the hour to the coast”. “ Roger navigator, it’s going to be a bloody long hour. Pilot to crew, did you hear that chaps, keep your eyes open and your fingers crossed.”
Onward we drone, long minute after minute through the darkness with everybody deep in their own thoughts, nerves stretched to breaking point. The engineer over my right shoulder is busy with his glow-worm of a torch and his fuel log working out the consumption, the navigator busy trying to get his Gee set to work and give us a fix to find out where we are and the gunners manually winding their turrets from side to side to search the inky black sky for any signs of enemy fighters. “Pilot to Special, are your sets still working?” “Special, yes skipper but there’s not much going on locally, we seem to be on our own.” OK Special, let’s hope it stays that way”.
“Pilot to bombaimer can you see the ground?” “Nothing worth while skipper, I’ve been trying to get a fix on something but so far, no good”. “OK bombaimer, keep looking”. On and on we fly though the night on the heading of 297, heading for the coast of mainland Europe, but which part? Any minute we could fly into a heavily defended area, be coned in searchlights and be the sole target for all the flak, heavy and light, at this level.
“Engineer to pilot, we’ve used up all the fuel in number one starboard tank now and switched to number one port. We seem to have enough fuel for just over an hour and a half at these settings” “Roger engineer, navigator, would you like to take a guess at our ETA for base?” “Navigator to pilot, my guess is about one hour fifty.” “Roger navigator, that seems a bit tight”.
One and a half hours of fuel and one hour fifty to base, it looks as though we should go for an alternative. Without hydraulics, no flaps, possibly no brakes and a chance of a dodgy undercarriage an emergency field seems to be our best hope.