Free The Dam Busters by Paul Brickhill Page A

keep your mouths shut. Not even a whisper to your own crews. They’ll find out tomorrow. If there’s one slip and the Hun ‘gets an inkling you won’t be coming back tomorrow night.”
    They all drank shandy and went to bed, taking little white pills that the doctor had doled out so they would sleep well. As Gibson was going along to his room Charles Whitworth came in looking worried and buttonholed him quietly.
    “Guy,” he said, “I’m awfully sorry, but Nigger’s just been run over by a car outside the camp. He was killed instantaneously.”
    The car had not even bothered to stop.
    Gibson sat a long time on his bed looking at the scratch marks that Nigger used to make on his door. Nigger and he had been together since before the war; it seemed to be an omen.
    The morning of May 16 was sunny. Considering the scurry that went on all day it was remarkable that so few people at Scampton realised what was happening. Even after the aircraft took off hours later the people watching nearly all thought it was a special training flight.
    It was just after 9 a.m. that Gibson bounced into his office and told Humphries to draw up the flying programme.
    “Training, sir ? “—more of a statement than a question. “No. That is yes—to everyone else,” and as Humphries looked bewildered he said quietly: “We’re going to war tonight, but I don’t want the world to know. Mark the list ‘Night flying programme,’ and don’t mention the words ‘battle order.’”
    Watson, the armament chief, was dashing around busily. The pilots were swinging their compasses. Trevor-Roper was seeing that all guns were loaded with full tracer that shot out of the guns at night like angry meteors and to people on the receiving end looked like cannon shells. That was the idea, to frighten the flak gunners and put them off their aim. Each aircraft had two .303 Brownings in the front turret, and four in the tail turret. Each gun fired something like twelve rounds a second; each rear turret alone could pump out what looked like forty-eight flaming cannon shells a second; 96,000 rounds lay in the ammunition trays.
    Towards noon a Mosquito touched down with the last photos of the dams. The water in the Moehne was 4 feet from the top. After lunch “Gremlin” Matthews, meteorological officer at Grantham, spoke to all the other group met. officers on a locked circuit of trunk lines for half an hour. Such conferences rarely found agreement but this time they did. The lively bespectacled figure of “The Gremlin” walked into Cochrane’s office as soon as he had put the receiver down.
    “It’s all right for tonight, sir.” He gave a definite prediction of clear weather over Germany.
    “What?” said Cochrane. “No ifs, buts and probablies?” and “The Gremlin” looked mildly cautious just for a moment and took the plunge. “No, sir. It’s going to be all right.”
    Cochrane went out to his car and drove off towards Scamp ton.
    The Tannoy sounded about four o’clock, ordering all 617 crews to the briefing room, and soon there were 133 hushed young men sitting on the benches (two crews were out because of illness).
    Gibson repeated what he had told the others the previous night, and Wallis, in his earnest, slightly pedantic way, told them about the dams and what their destruction would do. Cochrane finished with a short, crisp talk.
    The final line-up was :
    Formation 1 : Nine aircraft in three waves, taking off with ten minutes between waves:
    Gibson,
Hopgood,
Martin.
    Young,
Astell,
Maltby.
    Maudsiay,
Knight,
Shannon.
    They were to attack the Moehne, and after the Moehne was breached those who had not bombed would go on to the Eder.
    Formation 2: One wave in loose formation:
    McCarthy,
Byers,
Barlow,
Rice,
Munro.
    They were to attack the Sorpe, crossing the coast by the northern route as a diversion to split the German defences.
    Formation 3 :
    Townsend,
Brown,
Anderson,
Ottley,
Burpee.
    They would take off later as the mobile