NORWAY BOMBER STORY – SCENE 1
The Halifax bomber soared over the small
coastal islands at the mouth of the fjord, clearing the rocks by a scant few
feet. Gently levelling off the plane remained at thirty feet above the silent
Norwegian water. Four ripples of water followed the plane at two hundred and
forty miles an hour. Vertical rock sides reared up three thousand feet at
either side of the mile wide fjord, giving a breathtakingly stunning view that
was almost primeval in its power and imagery.
Unusually, the alert German defences remained
quiet, too quiet. No flak, no fighters from their nearby base at Kristiansand
airfield. Was something up? Or was it just his nerves, the pilot thought as he
scanned his instruments and the outside view speeding by every second. Not even
the radar and listening posts stationed at Oderoya Stadion had found them; they
were undiscovered till now, or so it seemed. Maybe they would make it – they
had pulled a bad and dangerous mission; to get back home would be nothing short
of miraculous. Fuck this! No time for doubts, press on, all the way to their
objective, the target! If the pilot failed, he would die trying. Again he
scanned his instruments, moodily this time and frowned. He spoke slowly and
clearly into the intercom. “Pilot to Flight Engineer. Starboard outer is
running a bit hot, come up front and keep an eye on the gauges. I’m busy
checking for those frisky Krauts.”
“Engineer to Pilot. On my way.”
“Pilot to crew. Keep an eye out for Flak and
fighters. Keep scanning. If you see the bastards, call ’em out and for fuck
sake, use the clock system. We’re in enemy territory now. Let’s do this mission
and make it count. Pilot, out.”
Banking around the fjord edge, the heavy
warplane followed the dark water like a huge bird, built for war, to kill or to
be killed on the most dangerous mission of the war. And of their lives. This
was it – to prove it was possible, even achievable, for soon they would find
out one way or another.
Now the fjord was straight ahead, a deep
glacial valley, steep sided and water filled. Three miles of calm cold water as
dark as death itself and as cold as Norwegian ice. German guns ringed the cliff
tops on each side with a clear field of fire in their line of sight. Just one
shell could end their day now, badly. Surprise remained theirs – the guns were
silent. Suddenly a thought came to the pilot and his heart turned cold, at the
thought of her, the lost one. Shaking his head he snapped out of his reverie
and flew the plane.
“Darkstone”
Oh how I yearn to be with you, my dark angel of the forbidden
realm,
Our
time was brief, full of enduring emotion, of bridges crossed,
forever.
Now
you’re gone, nothing but dust, your memories haunting me, tempting me to my
grave.
So
tempting, to stop the pain in my soul, just one quick action and I’ll be with
you.
Not now
though, as I have a job to do.
Soon
enough we will be as one.
Now I
use my pain, our pain to do my eternal duty.
Forgive
me for going to war against your kind, now my enemy by circumstance.
I love
you my dark one…
The heavy bomber roared down the fjord,
thirty feet of air between it and the water, three miles to the objective, the
target, the secret facility. Now the Germans woke up, sporadic firing coming
from the hilltops on either side of the fjord; the height of the cliff sides
was lower here so the guns could target the plane… just. Large guns and small
alike spewed out their deadly fire. Several waterspouts sprang up behind the
bomber, fingers of white water a hundred feet high. Straining against gravity,
they collapsed, harmlessly. Nazi gunners made the classic mistake of firing on
sight of their enemy but not allowing for forward movement, so the shells fell
behind. They would soon learn and adjust their aim.
In the cockpit of the Halifax bomber the
pilot watched the shore based weapons fire ineffectively and he acted
accordingly. He gently brought the left wing up thirty degrees and climbed
twenty feet and allowed the bank to starboard to continue, a little. Enough to
leave their present course by yards but enough to keep forward momentum up the
fjord. After ten seconds and half a mile he corrected his course to the original.
This paid off: the second salvo of large anti-aircraft shells thundered into
the water at where the plane would have been. Yes, the gunners had re-aimed
correctly but their target wasn’t there, it had been a hundred yards to the
right. Onboard the pilot spoke. “Knew it would work. Okay, two miles to go,
keep alert. The square heads want to nail us now.”
Flying out of range of the last German guns
brought them into contact with more, an ongoing game of chess, who would draw
blood first? Yellow and red tracer shells arced in several directions as the
light guns on the shore tried to find the range, and failed. Proximity-fused
shells exploded in the air, scattering small razor-sharp fragments far and
wide. Like a fine rain this fell into the water in small splashes, well away
from the plane.
“Top Turret Gunner to Pilot. Can I return
fire at the enemy guns?” the frustrated gunner asked.
“Okay, but keep your bursts short; save some
ammo for our home trip.”
With a soft mechanical whirring noise the top
turret turned to port and lined up on the shore guns, four hundred yards. A
staccato of gunfire shot from the four point .303inch Browning machine guns in
the turret, at the limit of their range, a definite morale boost for the gunner
and his crew. The small shells fell around a shore based twin 20mm gun
position. Caught reloading, two of the gun crew fell dead, the price of war.
When their bloodied corpses had been removed, the Halifax was out of range…
Events moved so quickly, a rollercoaster of
war that was unstoppable with its ferocity and vengeance, calling for more
death, more high explosives, more gunfire and flying steal. Soon the surprise
of the bomber ran out, ran away from them and left them naked and now
vulnerable; all that remained was a large slow four engine heavy bomber with
seven men on a suicide mission and a quick death.
With the target in sight, less than two miles
away down the far end of the fjord, it all went wrong. It was so simple,
really. A large explosive charge had been placed in the water – was it one or
many? That never mattered; the bomber crew never suspected death lay lurking in
the dark water below them. When the bomber passed over at a mere thirty feet,
under many of the guns but just right for the moored explosives, primed for
action, tragedy struck. Six steel cables held a ton of High Explosive just
below the surface delicately, balanced by twenty four large air bladders. Now
the shore guns lost their battle, but this outcome was different.
Placed a mile and a half from the end of the
fjord, away from the so-called “target” which was out of blast range and within
good visual range of the officers who controlled the detonator, they pushed the
plunger and sent an electrical spark down waterproof wires under the water to
the bomb that slept no more. Here the fjord was just half a mile wide; those on
either bank had better duck or the blast wave would take the air from their
lungs and give them a huge slap in the face. Watched through several pairs of
binoculars away from the target and from other locations, the plane flew into
to the trap. As planned, like a child to a toy. No more seconds ticked away and
more badly aimed shellfire splashed around the plane, ineffectively. On the
ultimate part of the mission, so close yet so far to confirm what was suspected
but not known. Would it soon be a fact, were the Germans and their evil allies
doing their deadly business? No one on the Halifax would ever know. A great
“kick” in the water erupted into a tower of blinding white water and spray,
rising like some huge awakening monster from slumber. At nearly two hundred and
fifty miles an hour and just above zero feet, the plane roared into it.
Avoidance was impossible.
Onboard the bomber the pilot saw the blast
and water rise when he was a hundred yards away, rising, forever increasing in
height as the blast energy forced the water upwards. In two seconds it was
there – events were devastating. Up front the Bomb Aimer manning the single
front gun screamed: “Fuck! Skipper turn, turn away!”
But it was too late. Nosing into the water,
metal was torn, sheets of aluminium were torn, breaking, flying from the wing
surfaces. Exposed ribs and stringers of the inner wing structure bent and
creaked under immense strain. Several main wing fuel tanks ruptured, fuel mixing
with water. Propeller blades on the port two engines snapped like matchwood and
sent fragments spinning like confetti; number one port engine coughed and died,
flooded by water. Number two now bladeless continued to run for a split second,
screaming as the engine oversped; in a blur the top cowling cover was torn free
and spun into space like an autumn leaf in a gale. Straight after, the engine
mountings failed and snapped. Freed of the wing, the engine tumbled free and
fell into the fjord waters. Loose electrical cables sparked and arced, shooting
sparks into the air like angry little creatures themselves alive as the
warplane died. Under the upward shove of rising water, the bomber lurched
upwards as if by a giant hand, and both bomb doors failed immediately, the port
door jamming up against the warload, the starboard door bending downwards and
coming away in the spray of water. Both right engines continued to run, turning
their airscrews at full power. As the port wing engines had no power, the starboard
side yawed out of control and added to the destruction, overstressing the right
main spar that coupled with the upward thrust from the blast to separate the
starboard wing cleanly from the fuselage. Now coming out of the terrific column
of water the airplane was battered, broken, wounded, dying. Sure enough, the
explosives had worked as intended. Spinning like a falling leaf, the right wing
soared and careered two hundred yards through the air. Visible damage amounted
to large sections of alloy missing from the lower surface and three single
panels from the upper. Both engines turned a speed until the wing hit the
surface of the sandy shoreline, under a cliff face, in a noise made like Thor
himself, and the aerofoil ceased to be. Ruptured fuel tanks exploded as metal
sparked against rock, igniting hundreds of gallons of gasoline. The structure
collapsed, bent and deformed, sending metal fragments in all directions,
shattering in a ball of angry orange flame. Black smoke rose into the air as
the remains tumbled and bounced, dislodging part of the rock face by the narrow
beach. In a cacophony of sound, tons of loose rock fell onto the wreckage and
into the shallow water, sending ripples gently outwards as the fire burned, fed
by burning alloy and fuel vapour. It resembled a scene from hell. Was this a
snapshot of what would soon happen if the Nazis used their new super weapon?
Missing a wing, the Halifax continued in the
direction of flight for a few more seconds. Now only a fine mist remained of
the water tower from the explosion, gravity dragged the battered outburst back
to its home, the fjord. Ripples spread far and wide as a reminder the blast. In
the air, the mortally hit Halifax curved to earth in a big arc, what airspeed
there was fell away. It resembled a child’s model plane, broken and thrown
away, discarded after a tantrum. But this warplane contained seven men. In the
tail gun position the gunner, a 26-year-old Irish man, a veteran of eighteen
missions, was very fearful. He glimpsed the torn-off wing hitting the beach and
the chaos that followed and he knew what would follow, that he was about to
die. In the top turret the 22-year-old gunner screamed, an animal sound as he
prepared to die. Up front the Bomb Aimer was one of the lucky ones; knocked unconscious
by the blast, it was his young fiancée back in England who would be unlucky. In
the cockpit the pilot struggled in vain to control what was uncontrollable:
until the last moment he struggled, a lost battle – he was a brave man. Down by
his side the Flight Engineer hung on for his life, with no functioning engines
to monitor now. Never in his young nineteen years had he ever been as scared
but he still had faith in his pilot to land this broken plane, even now. His
young innocence was also naivety. Behind the Bomb Aimer, the Navigator quickly
prayed as he felt the bomber shake and lurch through the air. He quickly looked
at the view ahead and past the unconscious Bomb Aimer and he became upset. He
had reason to be. The last crew member, the Wireless Operator, in the
fuselage, was already dead. A piece of metal had broken away and had hit him on
the head, fracturing his skull. He was slumped over his radios, dead at his
post.
Now, falling tail first to the earth from an
altitude measured in a few dozen feet, debris broke away and followed the
plane, small splashes in the water. Touching once, violently, the Halifax
bounced back into the air, tail lifting for a second and then plunging into the
water followed by the rest of the machine. The glazed nose area caved in,
smashed in by the water; torrents poured in past the Bomb Aiming position,
washing the Gunner down the fuselage, along with the Navigator, who drowned,
horribly. Water cascaded like a mad serpent through the plane, filling space
occupied by air in less than ten seconds, a watery tomb for all on board. Those
alive and conscious drowned and left this world. Settling into the dark water,
lower and lower until the fuselage disappeared completely, the plane
disappeared from view. Due to the missing wing, the starboard side sank first
to the bottom of the fjord, thirty metres below and a hundred from the shore.
In two minutes calm water replaced the ripples and waves; only floating debris
remained, along with the burning wing on the shore. It was like the airplane
has ceased to exist. Now the pilot was with his dead Satanic love.
Orders had been followed and somber
congratulations were passed by radio to the gun crews and special explosive
crew who had taken part in the battle and won. Victory was won, proving the
technique of placing a ton of explosive in shallow water, could bring a plane
down. Gun crews had harried their enemy but equally helped in the end result.
Would the next attack be as easily repulsed? What if it was a dozen bombers, a
hundred? Only time would tell…
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