For those who were left on the ground, take-off was always an impressive sight. ‘About twenty yards away we could just discern a vast dinosaurish shape,’ wrote one American observer on a similar night, as he watched the last of the stream of planes leaving the airfield.

After a moment, as if stopping to make up its mind… it lumbered forward, raising its tail just as it passed us, and turning from something very heavy and clumsy into a lightly poised shape, rushing through the night like a pterodactyl. At this instant, a white light was flashed upon it and a Canadian boy from Vancouver who was standing beside me, put down its number and the moment of departure. It vanished from sight at once and we stood staring down the field, where in a few seconds a flashing green light announced that it had left the ground…

A great calm settled over the place as the last droning motors faded out in the distance and we all drove back to the control room where staff hang onto the instruments on a long night vigil… I went to sleep thinking of the… youngsters I had seen, all now one hundred and fifty miles away, straining their eyes through the blackness relieved only by the star-spangled vault above them. ⁹

An hour later, just after 11.00 p.m., the last of the huge fleet of aircraft took to the air. The battle of Hamburg was about to begin.

* * *

Once each plane was airborne everyone’s nerves subsided. Each member of the crew had a job to do, and there was a sense of relief that the operation was finally under way. In the cockpit the pilot held the controls in both hands, wrestling the aircraft up into the sky, while the flight engineer advanced the throttles for one side or the other, to correct any swing that had developed after take-off. Flying a four-engined heavy bomber in 1943 was a physical business, and required brute strength, especially when taking off or landing.

Behind the pilot and the flight engineer, curtained off from the cockpit, the navigator sat, sideways on, at his table. Charts and log books were laid out before him, lit by a small Anglepoise lamp as he took his first reading of the night. ‘First course, Skipper, 032 degrees,’ he bellowed, through the intercom. It was difficult to hear one another over the deafening noise of the aircraft engines, and the men often had to speak loudly and clearly to make themselves understood.

Just behind the navigator, separated by banks of equipment, sat the wireless operator. Unlike the other members of the crew, he often spent the flight in his shirtsleeves: the Lancaster’s heating system had a hot-air outlet right beside him and he was the only member of the crew to stay warm throughout the trip. Beyond him was the main spar, which in the Lancaster was a waist-high wall of metal between the two wings – and beyond that were the stacks of Window, piled up next to the Elsan chemical toilet, ready to be dropped down the flare chute. A narrow ladder led up to the turret, where the mid-upper gunner scanned the sky above for the possibility of intruding German night fighters.

The final two members of the crew sat in the extremities of the plane. In the nose, beneath the cockpit, the bomb-aimer faced downwards, with nothing but a sheet of Perspex between him and a drop of thousands of feet to the ground. At the very back the ‘tail-end Charlie’ – the rear gunner – had nothing to look at but the fading glow of the sunset on the western horizon. Separated from the rest of the crew, he faced a lonely night. It was cold too: it was all too easy to mistake a smudge on the glass for an approaching night fighter, so the rear turret had a square section cut out of the Perspex in front of the gunner’s face, called a ‘clear-view panel’. The rear gunner was literally flying with a window open. At 20,000 feet temperatures could fall to –30°C and lower, and even his electrically heated suit could not always take the edge off a chill like that. Besides, some rear gunners either did not wear their heated suits or did not plug them in because they found the warmth made them drowsy. Rear gunners were often the only members of the crew to spot an approaching night fighter, and when the long dreary night could be interrupted in a split second it was better to remain alert, even if it meant shivering in Arctic temperatures.

* * *

There were four main types of British bomber in use at this stage of the war. The newest and most effective was the Avro Lancaster: a huge, sleek machine capable of flying to Berlin and back laden with over six tons of bombs. Its long, cigar-shaped fuselage was punctuated by five Perspex blisters, through which its crew would constantly scan the skies for attackers. Four Rolls-Royce Merlin engines along its wings could carry it to a height of 22,000 feet and above, and at speeds of 266 m.p.h. The Lancaster was unquestionably the best night bomber of the Second World War.

Slightly bigger and more temperamental in the air was the Handley Page Halifax. With a ceiling of 20,000 feet, the Halifax was relatively safe from flak, but its blind spot beneath the back of the aircraft made it vulnerable to fighters coming from behind and below. Despite its impressive ceiling, and top speed of over 275 m.p.h., it could carry only just over half the bomb load of a Lancaster.

The Short Stirling was often described as a ‘gentleman’s aircraft’: it was easy to handle, and capable of absorbing an enormous amount of punishment before it succumbed to flak or fighter fire. Without the waist-high spars that the Lancaster had in its interior, it was also relatively easy to escape from – which was fortunate, because its lamentable ceiling of only 16,000 feet made it the first target of all the German flak batteries. There are tales of Lancaster and Halifax crews cheering when they heard that Stirlings would be accompanying them on an operation, because they drew German fire away from the higher-flying machines.

The last type of aeroplane that flew to Hamburg that night was the twin-engined medium bomber, the Vickers Wellington. This unfortunate aircraft was virtually obsolete by this stage in the war, and seemed to combine all the worst drawbacks of all the four-engined ‘heavies’. It was slower, smaller, and had fewer guns to defend itself. It flew at a similar height to the Stirling, but could carry less than half its bomb load. Seventy-three of these aeroplanes had taken off for Hamburg that evening, with a further twelve tasked with minelaying in the Elbe estuary and dropping propaganda leaflets over France.

For the first part of the trip, the main force would also be accompanied by a small force of light bombers: eleven De Havilland Mosquitos would follow them across the North Sea, then peel off to attack alternative targets in Kiel, Lübeck, Bremen and Duisburg. These additional targets were merely diversions, designed to keep the Germans guessing about the main force’s true destination.

At first glance such diversionary missions looked extremely dangerous for the crews concerned: bombers are like herd animals – safe in numbers but vulnerable when they venture out alone. If one considers that the Mosquito was made only of plywood, and usually had no defensive armament, then those four diversionary raids looked like a suicide mission. However, Mosquitos were so fast, and capable of flying at such extreme altitudes, that they were virtually untouchable. All would return unscathed to England the next morning.

This, then, was the force that took off from airfields across England on 24 July. Its first task was to climb as high and as quickly as possible – the higher they were, the safer. As they did so, they set course for their crossing points on the English coast: 4 Group and the Canadians of 6 Group headed towards Hornsea, 1 and 5 Groups made for Mablethorpe, on the coast of Lincolnshire, while 3 Group and the Pathfinders of 8 Group headed for Cromer, in Norfolk.