‘When good concentration is achieved,’ he continued, ‘Window can so devastate an RDF defence system that we ourselves have withheld using it until we could effect improvements in our own defences, and until we could be sure of hitting the enemy harder than he could hit us. The time has now come when, by the aid of Window in conserving your unmatched strength, we shall hit him even harder.’ ⁵

During briefings the intelligence officer was often a figure of fun. Whenever he claimed that an operation would be a ‘piece of cake’, or that the route out to a target would be free from flak, he was greeted with jeers from the more cynical airmen. Today, however, his speech was greeted by a respectful silence. While some of the old hands privately doubted that a few bundles of silvered paper would protect them from the ferocity of the German defences, most crews seemed to accept the speech at face value. The secrecy that had so far surrounded the new device had obviously impressed them: this was not merely intelligence guesswork but something that had been worked out scientifically. Most of the airmen knew enough about radar to recognize its limitations; that it could be jammed by clouds of foil strips seemed plausible. Only time would tell.

Then the CO took the stage once more and asked if anyone had any questions – but by now they had been well briefed, and few had anything to ask. He told them to synchronize their watches, wished them luck and left the room.

As the men filtered out of the main briefing room there was no time to talk about the unusual speech they had heard, even if it had been seemly to do so. Many had now to go to shorter, specialist briefings, to make sure that all the minutiae of their duties were fixed firmly in their minds. Navigators would be given the exact route to and from the target, along with details of turning points, the winds they were likely to encounter and so on. Wireless operators were told which German frequencies they would be jamming, and reminded to listen out for the ‘Zephyr’ transmissions, while bomb-aimers were informed of what colour target indicators they would see, and which were the right ones to bomb.

It was only when all the crew members came together for their flight meal in the mess, at around seven o’clock, that they were able to discuss the forthcoming operation. By now, though, most were tired of it, and wanted to talk about something else. The only mention of the job that faced them would come in typical RAF gallows humour: they would shake their heads and run a finger across their throats to imply that another crew would be shot down. The anxious questions of new crews would be greeted with callous replies: ‘Oh, I wouldn’t worry about that. You’re not going to make it tonight anyway…’ ⁶As they collected their trays of bacon and eggs, beans, tomatoes and even fruit juice – rare luxuries in British civilian life in 1943 – some would use their sense of impending doom to flirt with the girls behind the counter, and entreat them to give them extra-large helpings. After all, they’d say, this might be their last meal. It wouldn’t do to die on an empty stomach: the least the kitchen staff could do was to fatten them up, like lambs for the slaughter, before they went out into the hellish skies over Germany.

* * *

After their meal, the men made their way to the parachute store to pick up their parachutes and don their flying gear. They would empty their pockets of everything personal – even the stub of a cinema ticket could give away important intelligence if they were captured – then fill them with everything they might need: escape kits, foreign currency, perhaps a penknife for emergencies, and the all-important flying rations to stave off hunger on the way home. The gunners and bomb-aimers looked strangely inflated: wearing several layers of jackets, including an electrically heated one, it was a miracle that they fitted into the confined spaces of the gun turrets.

As the crews waited for the trucks to come and take them to dispersal there was much laughing and joking – but the station staff, who had seen hundreds of air crews fly off never to return, knew it was all bluff. Even the most blaséairmen were exhibiting nerves, and each of the many different ways they found to fight down their fear had its own poignancy. Some lay on the grass, smoking pipes and gazing out into the dusk. Others flirted shamelessly with the WAAF drivers who came to pick them up, snatching a last opportunity to speak with a woman before taking off into the unknown. For the many New Zealanders, Australians and Canadians among the crews it sometimes helped to talk about their homes, thousands of miles away on the other side of the world. Superstition was rife. Some men were laden with lucky charms and dolls; when they lost or forgot one, they might fall into a blind panic. Many slavishly followed a little ritual as they prepared themselves – always wishing their crew members luck with the same words, always buttoning their coats in the same order, always taking the same seat in the truck to where their plane was waiting for them, huge and silent in the dusk by the perimeter track.

Out on the airfield, with half an hour to go before the engines were started, the airmen’s anxiety mounted still further. For Bill McCrea this was the worst time. Surrounded by the smell of kerosene and engine oil, the grey-blue mass of the aeroplane looming over him, there was nothing left to dispel his rising nerves:

You had to hang around at dispersal, and talk to the ground crew. That was very, very bad. We’d talk about anything, anything at all. Anything apart from what you had to do – the job. Sometimes I felt physically sick… It wasn’t what was happening at the time that was the problem. Whenever anything happened you could fight it, you had things to do. It was the thought of what mighthappen – that was the worrying thing. ⁷

As the sun was sinking over the horizon, the crews indulged in their last ritual of the evening – relieving their bladders against the huge wheels of the aircraft – then climbed into their positions inside. The pilot and flight engineer would run up the great Merlin engines in the correct order, one by one: ‘Starboard inner: contact.’ A press on the starter button, and the engine would roar into life. ‘Starboard outer…’ With all four engines running, the pilot and flight engineer checked the oil pressure, tested the throttles and magnetos for each engine. The navigator spread his maps, and the gunners crammed themselves into the turrets that would be their cages for the next six hours. On a signal from the flight engineer, the ground crew would pull away the wooden chocks from in front of the wheels and the aircraft would start to taxi round to the dispatcher’s caravan, where groups of WAAFs had gathered to wave goodbye to each plane as it headed off down the runway. A green light was flashed as the signal for take-off – radio silence was imperative, even now, in case the Germans got wind of the impending attack – and, with a roar, the first of 792 Lancasters, Stirlings, Halifaxes and Wellingtons took off into the gathering dusk.

Kenneth Hills, a bomb-aimer with 9 Squadron, remembers this moment as the most nerve-racking of all: ‘Taking off was always a sobering moment, bearing in mind what a tyre burst would do for you when you were full of high explosive and 100-octane fuel, bumping down the runway, seeing the perimeter hurtling at you, waiting for the lift-off which seemed endless, then suddenly you’re clear, no bumps, no tyre burst, just a lovely sound from the Merlins, and you’re on your way.’ ⁸

The first plane to leave the ground was Sergeant P. Moseley’s Stirling of 75 (New Zealand) Squadron at 9.45 p.m. He was soon overtaken by the faster Lancasters of the Pathfinder Force, who would be leading the attack. Of the hundreds of planes that headed down runways across England that evening, only one failed to take off; forty-five more would return to their bases with technical difficulties – an average figure for this time in the war.