Enemy Coast Ahead

The Illustrated Memoir of Dambuster Guy Gibson

Guy Gibson

• Publisher: Greenhill Books
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781784384913
• Topic: Histoire
• Subtopic: Biographies militaires

A definitive new edition of a classic, World War II memoir, complete with more than 100 photographs, and notes from leading historians. Guy Gibson was the leader of the famous Dambusters raid, and Enemy Coast Ahead is a vivid, honest account, widely regarded as one of the best books on the Second World War. It also provides an insider's perspective, setting down in clear detail the challenges that the RAF faced in the war against Germany's Luftwaffe. Tragically, Gibson died in September 1944, when his Mosquito crashed near Steenbergen in the Netherlands. He was aged just 26. This new book has been published to mark the 75th anniversary of his death and includes an introduction by James Holland, a historian and broadcaster. It includes notes by Dr Robert Owen, the Official Historian of the No. 617 Squadron Association, and many images that have never before been published. Published in association with the RAF Museum Inspired the 1955 film The Dam Busters, starring Richard Todd and Michael Redgrave

Chapter 1

Flight Out

The moon was full; everywhere its pleasant, watery haze spread over the peaceful English countryside, rendering it colourless. But there is not much colour in Lincolnshire, anyway. The city of Lincoln was silent – that city which so many bomber boys know so well, a city full of homely people. People who have got so used to the Air Force that they have begun almost to forget them. Lincoln with its great cathedral sticking up on a hill, a landmark for miles around. Little villages in the flat Fenland slept peacefully. Here nice simple folk live in their bastions on the East Anglian coast. The last farmer had long since gone to bed, the fire in the village pub had died down to an ember. The bar, which a few hours ago was full of noisy chattering people, was silent. There were no enemy aircraft about and the scene was peaceful. In fact, this sort of scene might not have changed for a hundred years or so. But this night was different – at least different for 133 men: 133 young fliers, and I was one of those men. This was the big thing. This was it.

We were flying not very high, about one hundred feet, and not very far apart. I suppose to a layman it was a wonderful sight these great powerful Lancasters in formation, flown by boys who knew their job. Below us, and also practically beside us, at 200 miles an hour flashed past trees, fields, church spires and England.

We were off on a journey for which we had long waited, a journey that had been carefully planned, carefully trained for, a mission which was going to do a lot of good if it succeeded; and everything had been worked out so that it should succeed. We were off to the Dams.

Those who have seen a Lancaster cockpit in the light of the moon, flying just above the earth, will know what I mean when I say it is very hard to describe. The pilot sits on the left of a raised comfortably padded seat fitted with arm-rests. He usually flies the thing with his left hand, resetting the gyro and other instruments with his right, but most pilots use both hands when over enemy territory or when the going is tough. You have to be quite strong to fly a Lancaster.3

In front of him the instruments sit winking. On the sperry panel, or the blind-flying panel as bomber pilots call it, now and then a red light, indicating that some mechanism needs adjusting, will suddenly flash on. The pilot of a bomber must know everything. He must know the duties of the rest of the crew inside out, and should be able to take any one of them over should the occasion arise. The flight-engineer is the pilot’s mate and sits beside him watching the engine instruments. Most flight-engineers were ground mechanics of bomber command who have volunteered to fly on operations, and a grand job of work they do too.4

It is warm inside and both pilot and flight-engineer are very lightly clad, their oxygen masks hanging on one strap from the corner of the face. These masks are necessary evils. When over enemy territory they are worn continuously, not only because oxygen is required but because the pilot has no time to take his hand off the wheel and put the microphone up to his face. The result is that one gets quite chapped after six hours with the thing on. Many times the question is asked, ‘Why can’t we have throat microphones like the Americans?’

Between the two front windows is a large instrument, perhaps the most important of all, the repeating compass, worked by a master unit at the back.5 The pilot’s eyes constantly perform a nonstop circle from the repeater to the A.S.I. (Airspeed Indicator), from the A.S.I. to the ‘horizon, from the horizon to the moon, from the moon to what the can see on the ground and then back to the repeater. No wonder they are red-rimmed when he returns.6

Such is the scene. The glass house. Soft moonlight. Two silent figures, young, unbearded, new to the world yet full of skill, full of pride in their squadron, determined to do a good job and bring the ship home. A silent scene, whose only incidental music is provided by the background hiss of air and the hearty roar of four Merlin engines.

In my Lancaster it was pretty warm even though Hutch had turned off the heat. I was in my shirt sleeves and my Mae West. Incidentally, my Mae West was a German one, pinched off some fellow shot down back in 1940, and the envy of the whole squadron. The windows were open and a jet of cool air was blowing in, making a tremendous screeching noise. I yelled to Pulford, the flight-engineer, at the top of my voice, ‘Close that window for Christ’s sake.’

Pulford, a Londoner, and a sincere and plodding type, was pushing and struggling and at last got the thing closed; like the silence at the end of a crash the noise snapped off and we were in comparative silence.7 Then I spoke to Terry. ‘Where are we now, Nav.?’

‘I think we are about a mile to port. I’ll just check. What do you think, Spam?’

Spam was the bomb-aimer and it was some time before he answered because he had been taking off his parachute harness and was now picking up his position from a roller map. It looked like a roll of lavatory paper. But no matter what it looked like it had to do a pretty important job; the job of that roll and Spam and Terry was to get us to the target. ‘Yeah, you’re right, Terry, we are a little over a mile to port; there’s the railway going to King’s Lynn.’

Spam, the Australian, was the best bomb-aimer there is, but he was not too hot at map-reading, and Terry looked over my shoulder to check him up. Later he popped back into his cabin to make a quick calculation. Then I was told to alter course three degrees to starboard and by the slightest pressure on the rudder the great Lancaster almost imperceptibly pointed her grim blunt nose a little further south, and on either side the boys did the same.

After a while Terry spoke again.

‘Ten minutes to the coast. We will be able to get a pretty good check there, we go slap over Yarmouth.’

Good boys these, Terry and Spam. F/O. Taerum came from Calgary, Canada. He had a soft Canadian accent, was well educated and in love with a very nice girl, a W.A.A.F. from Ireland called Pat. Probably the most efficient navigator in the squadron, he had done about thirty-five trips and knew what he was doing. I never knew Terry to lose his temper over anything, but sometimes he and Spam would argue the point over where they were. Spam, or F/O. Spafford, D.F.M., as his real name was, came from Melbourne, Australia. He was a grand guy and many were the parties we had together; in his bombing he held the squadron record. Just before he had asked me if he could take off his parachute harness because we were flying so low, anyway, that we would not have been able to bale out even if we had the chance. But that just illustrates what he thought of flying. It was just one big gamble and he had put his counter on the right mark. Spam had done a little more than Terry, about forty trips, and used to fly with one of the crack pilots in 50 Squadron. When he came to our squadron I think he was a bit nervous of my flying, but he seemed to recover after the first few trips. Both had pretty good accents deriving from their respective Dominions. I have, if anything, a southern English accent which in the air sounds rather a drawl, with the result that when we, as the offensive team in the bomber, got annoyed with one another, no one, particularly ourselves, knew what the hell we were talking about, which was a pretty good thing anyway.

In the back sat Trev – in the rear-turret in Air Force parlance – and of all places in the bomber I think it is the most uncomfortable. He was in his shirt-sleeves, too, but later on pulled on his old teddy-bear flying suit, not because it kept him warm but because of its smell. All clothes which have been on a lot of raids have a smell, a peculiar but not unpleasant smell which shouts aloud to all bomber crews who are in the know that the wearer, or owner, whichever the case may be, is pretty experienced; a Gen-man. A wife or loving mother would send the thing to the laundry if she had her way, but you try to do that with the boys. As far as I can see the stronger the smell the better it is liked!

F/Lt. Algernon Trevor-Roper, D.F.M., rear gunner, came of a pretty good family, and all that sort of thing, was 28, English, Eton, Oxford, and 65 trips. He was one of the real Squadron characters. At night he might go out with the boys, get completely plastered, but would be always up dead on time in the morning to do his job. He got his D.F.M. for shooting down two fighters which tried to down him one night last year. Now his wife was living in Skegness and was about to produce a baby within the next few days. I guessed he was thinking of this. Anyway, he was pretty silent because he hadn’t said a word up to now. He was probably thinking exactly what I was thinking. Was this the last time we would see England?8

Further forward Hutch was in his place at the wireless. He had flown with me on about forty raids and had never turned a hair. He was one of those grand little Englishmen who have the guts of a horse. On most trips he invariably got air-sick, but after he had done his stuff just carried on as if nothing had happened. He was in love, too, with a girl in Boston. In the front turret was Jim Deering of Toronto, Canada, and he was on his first bombing raid. He was pretty green, but one of our crack gunners had suddenly gone ill and there was nobody else for me to take.

As I sat back in my comfortable seat I could not help thinking, that there were seven men in a bomber bound for somewhere in Germany. Seven men with wives and sweethearts, for all we knew sleeping in one of the houses we had just roared over. England virtually was at peace, but we were at war, the toughest, hardest war there is, the bomber war. I had been in the racket for some time and it had become practically part of me, but when I thought of all the friends I knew who had come and gone, to be mere memories, a name on the casualty sheets in the Air Ministry, or the scroll of honour in a Squadron Mess, then I shuddered. After a while I just sat back in my comfortable seat and relaxed and dismissed these thoughts from my mind and concentrated on steering my course. Suddenly in the distance, like a great arc drawn across the land by silver paper, came the North Sea – the sea which now seemed unfriendly because we were going the wrong way. I hoped it would look different a few hours later.

And then Terry was saying ‘Yes, there’s Yarmouth coming up in front.’

‘That’s right.’

‘Yeah, there’s the harbour.’

‘Sure it’s Yarmouth?’

‘That’s it all right.’

‘O.K., alter course 110.’

‘110 O.K.’

‘O.K.’

And our noses were then going straight for the point at which we had to cross the Dutch coast. The sea was as flat as a mill-pond, there was hardly a ripple. Once we were over we dropped lower and lower down to about fifty feet so as to avoid radio detection. I tried to put in George the automatic pilot, but unfortunately it was U.S. and as I engaged it the nose plunged forward and I just disengaged it in time. One of the aircraft on my left flashed me a red light as if to say, ‘What the hell are you doing?’ Then I settled down again, but after a time tried to light a cigarette. In doing so we again nearly hit the drink and the boys must have thought I was mad. In the end I handed the thing to Pulford to light for me. The night was so bright that it was possible to see the boys flying on each side quite clearly. On the right was John Hopgood, in M Mother, that grand Englishman whom we called ‘Hoppy’; one of the greatest guys in the world. He was devoted to his mother and devoted to flying; used to go out with us a lot, get drunk – used to go out a lot to Germany and do a wonderful job. He had no nerves, he loved flying which he looked upon rather as a highly skilful art in which one can only become proficient after a lot of experience. He was one of the boys who firmly refused to be given a rest and had done about fifty raids with me in my last squadron. Perfect at formation was Hoppy, too. There he was, his great Lancaster only a few feet from mine, flying perfectly steady, never varying position. Once when training for this raid we had gone down to Manston in Kent and shot up the field with wings inside tail planes, and even the fighter boys had to admit it was the best they had ever seen. I should say Hoppy was probably the best pilot in the squadron.

On my other side, flashing him a message with his Aldis lamp, rather as ships do in a convoy at sea, was Micky Martin. Micky Martin came from Australia and he too had done a lot of flying. He was slightly more splitarse than Hoppy, and flying to him was nothing unless it was dangerous. In fact, many times after a raid on Berlin or Hamburg, instead of coming back with the boys at 22,000 feet, he would scream down to the deck and fly home via Holland, Belgium and France, shooting up anything he could see. That, to him, was a bit of fun and something that he and his crew liked. However, to-night he had to be good and stick to the plan because if he didn’t things would go wrong, and so there he was flying dead level with Hoppy on the other side. Now and again he would drop down even lower than I was and I was a bit frightened in case he hit the drink. But apparently he knew what he was doing because he never came closer than 30 feet to the water. Further back were the rest of them – Melvyn Young from America, leading Bill Astell and David Maltby – followed by Henry Maudslay leading Dave Shannon and Les Knight who were both Australian. This was my formation, and a great team they were.

The sea was calm as I had never seen it before, and as Micky got lower and lower on the water I could see his reflection quite clearly coming up to meet him. In the north there is that bomber boys’ bad dream – the glow. Some scientists call it the aurora borealis, but you ought to hear what we call it when there are fighters about! That glow never disappears in the summer; and this was summer. The hours of darkness were limited; we had to go fast to get there and back in time.

There were no other aircraft operating in the whole of the home based Air Forces. No one even knew that we were operating except for a few, and even they did not know where we were going.

But deep down in the ground two hundred odd miles away were the Germans. In their plotting rooms they sat watching their cathode ray tubes, waiting for some indication that would set all their defenses alert. The lower we flew the closer we could get before they picked us up, but I knew that at a range of about thirty miles they would get us even if our bomb-doors clove a furrow through the water. Then their guns would be ready. Then the fighters would take the air. Then there would be a chattering and a babbling in the Observer Corps plotting rooms. And so, Huns and Quislings would sit up late at night in sandbagged emplacements waiting for the roar of the Lancasters.

Hutch was reading the message.

‘What is it, Hutch?’

‘He says we are going to get damn drunk to-morrow night.’

‘Send him back this: – You’re darn right we are. It’s going to be the biggest binge of all time.’ And then Hutch was busy flashing this message.

Soon we passed over a little convoy who engaged us with the challenge sig...