The British held high expectations of this last raid. Their plan of attack was significantly different from previous operations, and reflected their growing confidence in their destructive abilities. Tonight, for the first time, they would approach Hamburg from the south, and they would have not one but two aiming points. The first waves were to drop their bombs on to a point towards the north end of the Alster lake, with the idea that the creepback would sweep a curtain of destruction over Harvesthude and Rotherbaum – two districts that had suffered only lightly in the previous attacks. Then, half-way through the raid, the aiming point would be switched to the town of Harburg on the southern edge of the vast harbour complex. 8It was an ambitious but well-thought-out scheme that would spell the end of those areas of the city that had so far escaped the bombs – provided everything went to plan.
After all the postponements, Harris was keen to get started, weather allowing. As evening approached, a Mosquito was sent to check conditions over northern Germany: if the storms had cleared the area the RAF could head for Hamburg a fourth time, otherwise they would have to scrap the operation again. To make sure they had the most up-to-date weather report, and to give themselves the greatest chance of sticking to their plan, Bomber Command delayed the weather reconnaissance flight until the last possible moment: the Mosquito did not leave Wyton airfield until 6.45 p.m. When it returned three hours later, the two-man crew told the Meteorological Office what they had seen: the skies over Hamburg looked relatively clear, but a huge cumulo-nimbus to the southwest of Oldenburg was moving briskly in the direction of tonight’s target. 9There was a chance that it would have moved on by the time the bombers reached Hamburg, but it would be a risk.
Bomber Command was fast running out of time to make a decision one way or the other: if the squadrons were to get to Hamburg and back under cover of darkness they had to leave before midnight. After a hurried assessment, the Meteorological Office sent its weather report to Bomber Command at 10 p.m. Crucially, they had watered down any worries about the storm: they claimed that there was only a ‘slight risk’ that the bombers would encounter this dangerous weather.
When it came to the lives of his men Harris was normally fairly cautious, and on any other night he might have chosen an alternative target, or scrapped his plans. That night, however, impatience got the better of him: for such an important target a ‘slight risk’ was worth taking. The only concession to the weather was a modest alteration to the plan: instead of attacking two separate aiming points in the city, the bomber force would concentrate on one, on the north-west shoulder of the Alster lake. Otherwise the raid would go ahead as briefed. 10
Thus it was that 740 crews who had been on stand-by for the past couple of hours now made their way to dispersal. Many were astonished that the raid was going ahead. Some had already been told to expect violent weather, but others were left to guess at the strength of the conditions from the vague warnings they had received at briefing. But all were about to experience a night they would never forget.
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It was a blustery, overcast night when the bomber force took off. By midnight most of the planes were airborne and beginning to break through the cloud that covered the North Sea. For some crews the problems began almost as soon as they took off. At Scampton a Lancaster from 57 Squadron crashed on the runway and promptly caught fire, preventing six others behind it from taking off. 11Several planes from other squadrons did not even reach the English coast before they were forced to turn back with engine trouble – two of those landed so badly that they were written off, with injuries to seven crewmen. 12A further shock came over the sea when a startled Royal Navy convoy mistook the bomber stream for a German force and opened fire on them. While it seems they did not do any damage, it was hardly a good omen.
Whatever happened on the journey across the North Sea, the real trouble did not begin until the bombers reached the German coast. Of all the operations those airmen flew on, this was the one they universally remembered, even to this day; and for those who completed their tour, nothing came close to the fear and confusion they experienced that night. It began with a sinister, almost surreal vision. Up ahead they saw a cloud unlike any they had seen before: a huge, dark mountain of cloud, its sides cracked with deep fissures and chasms, and lit by the continual flashes of light that glinted from its depths. Some of the crews thought it was smoke, still rising from the burning ruins of Hamburg; many believed that the heavy flashes that lit it were from some terrific new weapon among the German flak. It was not until they got closer that they realized the truth: that it was the biggest and most violent electrical storm any of them had ever seen.
No pilot likes to fly through conditions so bad, but that night there was nothing they could do to avoid it. To fly over the storm was impossible – the summit of the cloud rose to 30,000 feet, perhaps even higher, and apart from the handful of Mosquitos from 139 Squadron there was not an aircraft among them capable of flying so high while laden with bombs. There was no point in trying to fly round it either – to do that would have isolated anyone who tried it and taken him so far out of his way that he would never have had enough fuel to return home. One or two crews tried to fly under it, but gave up after sinking below 7,000 feet without managing to break free of the cloud. If they were to complete the raid they had to head directly into the storm.
As they approached the lower peaks of the massive cumulonimbus the temperature plummeted. Many crews chose this moment to turn round and head for home, sensing the danger that lay ahead. Of those that continued, most tried to delay flying through the cloud for as long as they could, choosing instead to follow the sinister rifts and valleys along its fringes. High walls of cloud loomed over them on both flanks, their dark bulk lit intermittently by sheets of lightning. Eventually the ravines ended. Then there was no alternative but to head straight for the seemingly impenetrable wall before them and break through into the heart of the storm.
Bill McCrea, the pilot who had found himself isolated on the previous raid when his squadron had sent him out twenty minutes late, remembers those moments as among the most terrifying of his life:
The stormclouds that had been over England some twenty-four hours earlier were now dead ahead, dark and forbidding, and towering above the bombers by several thousand feet. I realized that what I first took to be flak were in reality lightning flashes emanating from the stormclouds that we were rapidly approaching. As we flew into the lightning-charged clouds the effect was immediate and terrifying. The air currents came first, throwing the aircraft from side to side as well as up and down. One could almost hear the airframe protest as it was subjected to these external forces. The lightning was continuous; as it flashed one could see that the clouds were sometimes broken up by eerie canyons and ravines. 13
J. K. Christie, who flew a Lancaster with 35 Squadron, approached the storm with mounting anxiety. Afterwards he recorded the impressions in his diary:
Everything went smooth and according to plan until we approached Heligoland, where we started to run into clouds up to more than 20,000 feet. I carried on trying to keep above it and for some time just managed to keep popping in and out of the tops. By this time we were just about crossing the German coast. I saw numerous and colossal flashes all over the sky and for a long time I believed that the Germans had brought into action a new and terrific anti-aircraft weapon. After a certain while, we did not manage to keep on the top of the clouds and had to continue flying blind, shaken every ten seconds by terrific flashes which totally blinded me for many seconds afterwards. We got fairly heavy icing and very heavy statics.