| "Berlin 1" |
| By Frank Reeve People in the story;- The Air-crew of Lancaster ZN-A Apple. Location of story;- SYERSTON R.A.F; Station Nottinghamshire We arrived at our new posting very late on 30th December 1942, and were very impressed when the Duty Sgt told us that our Commanding Officer wished to meet his new crews, more so when introduced to Wing/Co Gibson. I remarked to my skipper how small he was for a Pilot and remember him saying that due to recent losses 106 Squadron had been stood down for 14 days, and he then went on to say that he would be finding us some nice quiet mine-laying trips to start us off....On Saturday 16th January we got our first call to the Opperations briefing room, I was busy following the red marker ribbons trying to decide who was going were when the C.O; walked onto the floor to say "Gentlemen your target for to-night is going to be Berlin" and reminded us that this was the first time for Lancasters to be sent to the Big City. We all assembled at the crew huts to await the crew-buses to take us to our dispersal point. This is where the Flight Engineer starts earning his thirteen shillings and six pence a day pay by doing a visual check of the air-craft, tyers, bomb load, A-Apple was fairly new with no problems, but on checking the flight log I did notice that the fuel load had been reduced and the bomb load had been increased, I queried this and was told that the Met-men had forcast a wind change for the return trip, so everything was in order and I signed for the air-craft from the ground staff Sgt. I was interested in the name on the next Lancaster "Admiral Prune" the Sgt told us it was the C/O's and had just been fitted with blocks of wood to the rudder pedals so that Gibson's short legs would reach. Next came the order to taxi to assembly ready for take-off, this was the heaviest load we had ever taken-off with. The green GO and the Pilot is aiming the Lancaster down the run-way, at 110 -115-120 mph my lefthand follows his righthand at the word go I take control of the four throttle levers and give the pilot full take-off through the gate power for lift-off. We are now on our climb to join the other 189 Lancasters heading for Berlin, it was a bright moon-lit night and as we followed our markers our target looked like a monster spiders web which was the marshalling yards we're looking at, a first time bombing run-in, bombs gone, we climb away and on course for home. We had been routed back beween Rostock and Lubeck which had been set alight before we arrived. As we crossed the coast our gunner came into action with Dive...Dive...Dive a J.U; 88 had crept in a bit to close for him, the Pilot took us down in a power dive to sea level, we lost the J.U; but over-heated one engine that mean that it had to be shut-down to prevent any more damage or the risk of fire. We had one futher problem with a change in wind direction, what the Met had forcast as a tail-wind, turned round to become a full head wind which left many of us in the mire to say the least, making savings of fuel in every possible way and wondering if the 100 galls was going to be really missed. However we did get back safely in the early hours of Sunday morning, next came de-briefing, bacon and eggs and off to bed for what was left of the night. |
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