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Between one and two o’clock in the morning of Sunday, 25 July, 2,300 tons of bombs were dropped on to Hamburg, a new and frightening world record for a single attack. A lot of the weight was made up of huge high-explosive bombs: 8,000-pound ‘blockbusters’ and 4,000-pound ‘cookies’, but it was undoubtedly the incendiaries that did most damage. The fires started by the first waves made it easier for the later waves to find their way to the target, and those in turn stoked the fires further. A total of 350,412 individual incendiary bombs fell in and around the city, starting countless fires – again, a new world record. 31
The official British intelligence report of the time announces such figures with a certain pride, which was certainly echoed in the hearts and minds of most of the crews who took part in the attack. Once they had dropped their bombs and turned away to the south of the city, they had the opportunity to see the results of their work. The comments they noted in their log books afterwards were almost always the same: ‘Good trip’, ‘A very good prang’, ‘Very nearly perfection’. Scores of crews in the latter stages of the attack reported seeing very large explosions in the docks. By the time the last Halifaxes of 6 Group had dropped their bombs, the whole of the west of the city had become ‘a mass of raging fires with black smoke rising to 19,000 feet’. Crews in the final wave reported the merging of all the separate fires into ‘one large conflagration spreading over the whole city’. It was so huge it could be seen by British Mosquitos flying on dummy attacks over Duisburg, 140 miles away. 32
It is easy to begrudge these men their feeling of pride at the destruction they were wreaking, but it is foolish to be surprised by it. Their job was to wage war, and tonight they had done their job well. For many it was nothing new. They had seen similar scenes over Dortmund, Wuppertal, Cologne and Essen. They had seen the war from the other side too, in London, Coventry, Sheffield, Plymouth and many other cities across Britain. For most of the young men in the bombers, tonight was a logical extension of all that had gone before – the concept of ‘an eye for an eye’ expanded to the scale of whole nations. And we must remember that
the crews were not only British. The Polish airmen in Bomber Command had a reputation for being particularly bloodthirsty, revelling in any opportunity to avenge the rape of their homeland. Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders and South Africans, who had never seen an attack on their home soil, were there for reasons that were more vague: a principle to be upheld, or a sense of loyalty to the Empire and ‘home country’. Many had joined up as volunteers simply for the excitement of flying. Their only thought now was to get home safely to their beds, one day closer to their next period of leave, and one operation closer to the magic total of thirty.
Mixed with their satisfaction was relief that the main part of the job was over, as they headed back into the safety of darkness. But their relief was misplaced: this was perhaps the most dangerous time of all. Silhouetted by the fires behind them, their guard down because of the natural complacency that follows such bursts of adrenaline, they were easy targets for night fighters. And now, at last, the night fighters were arriving. Once the attack on Hamburg had begun, many fighter controllers had abandoned their radar sets and told their crews to head straight for the city. Some had seen the fires and flown in on their own initiative. By half past one in the morning, the skies on the way out of Hamburg were becoming far more dangerous than they had been going in.
The more disciplined crews would not drop their vigilance for a moment. The skipper would return to weaving the plane, and warn the gunners not to look into the fires below for fear of losing their night vision. Navigators would set course along the designated route, roughly parallel to the route in, to take advantage of the safety provided by the bomber stream. Flight engineers and bombaimers, their job done, would return to dropping bundles of Window down the flare chute, lest they lose the advantage they had gained over the enemy radar. And the wireless operators would continue broadcasting ‘Tinsel’, the sound of their engines, on the German frequencies to block out any radio communication between their rivals in the air.
However, not all crews were quite so disciplined. Nervous and inexperienced pilots ignored the laid-down route and made a bee-line straight for the coast. It was an understandable temptation, particularly for those new pilots and navigators who had never experienced flak before. Some rear gunners could not help staring, mesmerized, into the inferno on the ground behind them, only to find that when they did tear away their eyes they were effectively blind in the darkness. Some crew members lit cigarettes, which they would puff between breaths on their oxygen masks, while others would open their flying rations with a yawn, exhausted by anxiety.
Almost half of that night’s casualties were shot down by night fighters on the journey home – and of those, most had been off track. Without the benefit of thousands of bundles of Window to mask their movements, they had been located by German radar and summarily dealt with. Some, like the crew of Flying Officer J. S. Cole, were lucky to escape. After being picked up by searchlights over Cuxhaven on the coast, Cole was attacked by a Messerschmitt Me109 – a day fighter – but was able to dive away without being hit. 33Likewise Sergeant S. Grzeskowiak was on his first operation when his Wellington was attacked by a Junkers Ju88 night fighter. He managed to escape after being hit, but was leaking petrol all the way home, and eventually had to crash land at Trusthorpe in Lincolnshire. Those crews lived to tell the tale, for now at least. 34
Others were not so lucky. Wallace McIntosh, a rear gunner with 207 Squadron, saw a Lancaster ‘blazing like hell’ a thousand yards away as a German fighter came in repeatedly to attack it. As the plane fell out of the sky he saw five parachutes open, but the Lancaster’s rear gunner, obviously trapped inside the plane, carried on firing till the end. ‘I have never seen such bravery,’ McIntosh recalls. ‘The poor bugger was still sitting there firing away and the fighter went back in to have another blast at him, with the gunner still defiant, and the Lancaster blew up.’ 35
For the vast majority of crews, however, the journey home was as uneventful as the journey in. By four o’clock in the morning the first of the Pathfinders had already landed at their bases, and the main bomber stream was crossing the coast into England. This was the last moment of danger for the RAF crewmen. For some of those who had been hit by flak there would be an emergency landing at an unfamiliar airfield. There was always the chance that returning planes could be attacked by German intruders, but the biggest fear was the possibility of ground fog, which could make landing hazardous. Tonight, at the height of summer, the likelihood of that was not great – but even in clear conditions it could be dangerous landing in the dark. Despite the wealth of his experience, the CO of 83 Squadron, John Searby, collided with a Lancaster of 156 Squadron as the two came in to land at Warboys. Fortunately both aircraft landed safely.
After taxiing back to their original positions on the airfield, the crews would emerge from their planes, grinning with relief. Transports would take them to the station buildings where they would be ushered in for debriefing. Blinking in the light, and glad of the chance for a cup of tea and a smoke, the men would sit down at a table with the intelligence officer to tell their stories. Every aspect of their trip was noted: the effects of Window, the weather conditions over the target, how easy it had been to spot the target indicators, how extensive the fires in the city and so on. If they had been attacked by enemy fighters, or seen anything unusual, special care was taken to record the details. Only when this process was over were the men allowed to have breakfast and go to bed, exhausted by their long night in the air. For many the whole process would be repeated the following night: in the war over northern Europe the summer months were all too short, and Bomber Command had to make use of every crew it could while conditions allowed.