Escape, Evasion and Revenge: The True Story of a German-Jewish RAF Pilot Who Bombed Berlin and Becam

Marc Stevens, who recently joined our forum, has published Escape, Evasion and Revenge: The True Story of a German-Jewish RAF Pilot Who Bombed Berlin and Became a POW. He has allowed us to republish the first chapter here.

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© Marc H. Stevens 2009​

After another thirty minutes heading eastward, Sgt Payne called to the pilot, “D’you see it, Stevie?”

“Yes, I do now,” was the response. They had both seen the protective ring of searchlights surrounding Berlin. Once they entered that ring, there would be no need to worry about German fighters, which would never enter the ‘Zone of Death’. The flak gunners on the ground would not be able to distinguish between friend and foe and would shoot at any aircraft they could see. It was the same around London, in fact. Every RAF bomber pilot knew to stay well clear of the capital when returning from an op, even in broad daylight. Gunners on the ground would shoot first and ask questions later.

Droning on towards the target, the Hampden’s crew was quiet yet purposeful. Stevens checked with the navigator regularly for wind drift and time remaining to the target. By the time Sgt Payne told him the final course to steer to reach the ‘initial point’ (IP), they had already begun flying through the searchlight beams. At the IP, they would make their last course correction, putting them on final approach to the aiming point, whence they would identify the target and release their bombs.

Nearing the centre of the Third Reich, Stevens felt an unusual sensation. After all, it was only five years since he had last visited the city. He asked himself whether any of the other crewmen had ever been in peacetime Berlin, such a beautiful and cultured place. Unlikely, he thought. He wondered how it had changed, sure that it now looked very different, courtesy of the RAF. He remembered with fondness watching Jesse Owens win so many gold medals at the 1936 Summer Olympics and his satisfaction at this great embarrassment to the Führer. Hitler had refused to bestow these laurels on a black man, who belonged to another people that the Nazis considered sub-human. He also recalled his last meeting with his mother, how awkward it had been, but how gently she had bidden him farewell. Where was she now? How was she coping? Despite his childhood animosity, Stevens hoped against hope that she was well and had avoided both British bombs and Nazi persecution, but he had his doubts. His mind strayed just slightly to the rest of his relatives still in Germany. For all of his
aunts, uncles, and cousins he felt concern, yet he suspected that they were probably dead. Even stronger in his mind than such concern, however, was the anger that demanded revenge. He vowed silently, “Many Nazis will die tonight.”

A call from the navigator returned the pilot to the present. As the sky erupted with metallic fury, Payne advised: “Three minutes to target, steady on course.” This was the pilot’s cue, and he reached over and flicked the switch that commanded the bomb bay doors to open. Payne backed away from the bombsight just long enough to look at the electrical panel on the side of the fuselage and flipped the switches that would arm the bomb fuses. Over the intercom, Stevens confirmed with him that he had tripped the appropriate bomb-selector switches and that the master bomb switch was now ‘On.’

“Pilot to navigator, you have the aircraft.”

From this point on, Payne controlled the Hampden. He would be command and control, all in one. For the crew had a single mission, to deliver the bomb load to the target. And that job was now squarely in Payne’s hands. He would coax the plane to the unique spot whence the bombs must fall perfectly. He would take into account prevailing wind, airspeed, altitude, and several other factors. He had become like a surgeon ready to excise a tumour, but knowing that one slip could kill hundreds of innocent civilians. His conscience was not ready for such a burden, and he would therefore do everything possible to hit the target. He made final adjustments to the bombsight lens and double-checked that he had entered the correct altitude and wind information. Then, looking downward through the reticle of the precision instrument, he issued minute left- or right-course corrections to Stevens, who was doing everything he could to keep the aircraft straight and level – never easy even at the best of times. Now, at the very worst of times, it was all but impossible. Flak shells were bursting around them, rocking their fragile little craft back and forth, up and down. If the show had not been so awesomely beautiful, it would have terrified them. Finally, it was time.

Focusing his right eye through the eyepiece of the complex bombsight, Payne regained his bearings and began searching for the railway junction that was his signal to press the ‘tit’ and release fire. Thanks to incendiary bombs that the first wave had dropped, there were a few fires in the surrounding area, which adequately illuminated objects on the ground.

There was the spot! As it reached the crosshairs in his reticle, Payne hit the release and muttered under his breath “There you go, you Nazi bastards, see how you like it!” He screamed over the intercom, “Bombs gone!!!” but the pilot had already felt the great lift the plane had experienced as 2,000 pounds had fallen free. Stevens’s first chore was to close the bomb doors and make the aircraft as slippery, smooth, and fast as possible.

The Hampden had jumped up almost a hundred feet as the deadly cargo disappeared. This was the pilot’s signal to break off the attack and get out of there as quickly as possible. But Stevens could not fly just willy-nilly in any direction, for fear of colliding with a friendly aircraft. He had to follow precise routing instructions to reach a safe area away from the immediate target before he could resume his planned course for England.

Despite their relief that the bombs had gone and they were leaving the central target area, crew members were painfully aware that they remained a target. Quite ironic, Stevens thought, a target over a target. The air gunners had very little to do but sightsee. Each reminded himself that they would see no fighters until they passed 15 miles of anti-aircraft artillery. The Luftwaffe’s two primary twin-engine night fighters -- Junkers JU-88s and Messerschmitt Bf 110s -- would not dare enter the killing zone.

Because the Hampden had now burnt off over twelve hundred pounds of fuel and disposed of 2,000 pounds of high explosives, the plane would fly higher and faster. Stevens now harnessed that advantage. As soon as he had felt the bombs go, he had advanced the throttles to full power and dropped the nose to obtain a burst of speed and help clear the killing zone of deadly shrapnel bursting around him. At the higher airspeed, it would take them only four minutes to clear the target area. Then they would have to contend with the fighters again. But if they could only fly west-northwest as far as the coast, they would have a decent chance of reaching …

Suddenly there was a blinding flash, a mighty thunderclap, and the aircraft slewed to the right, the port wing lifting and rolling the Hampden onto its side. Stevens fought to retain control of the bucking plane and worried that he had lost it. He commanded a left turn, but there was almost no control. He tried using full left rudder, and it helped, but there was something drastically wrong. He yelled into the intercom, “Is everyone all right?”


There was no reply from the navigator in the nose, but the two air gunners in the rear replied in the affirmative, and Sgt Fraser asked if the plane was all right. Stevens wasn’t sure and asked each of them for a damage report. The gunners, after a quick survey inside and out, now saw the cause of much of their problem. Fraser called back, “We’re missing a large chunk of tail and rudder on the port side, skipper.” Again, nothing from Sgt Payne.

“Keep me posted, and someone check on Doc (Payne),”replied Stevens. In the meantime, he tried to evaluate the situation as best he could. The port engine was now running very roughly, and airspeed had bled off from over 220 mph down to only 150. “At least we’re still flying,” he thought. But then Fraser hailed again on the intercom, “Skipper, we’re leaking fluid from the port wing. It might be fuel.”

It had to be fuel. Stevens felt the death knell as the message sunk in. His eyes went straight to the twin fuel gauges, and he felt his stomach twist in knots as he saw the level of port fuel drop visibly in less than a minute. But his primary concern for now was to fly the airplane. Too many accidents had occurred and people died because the pilot was so busy dealing with an emergency that he forgot to fly the plane. Stevens would not make that mistake. Now he began to realize that they might not return to England. His mind became a mechanical calculator, working overtime. Figures of airspeed, distance to England, and rates of fuel consumption raced through his brain and kept coming up short. Flying so slowly and certain to lose half of its fuel, the plane could not reach home. It had become a question of life or death. The Hampden would be easy pickings for the fighters at this speed. Would they survive?

Sgt Thompson grabbed his flashlight and advanced through the darkened fuselage and crawled under the pilot’s seat and down into the nose section, to check on the navigator. Immediately he found ‘Doc’ dazed but uninjured. He checked him from top to bottom and could find no blood or holes in his flying overalls. Thompson gave him a good shake and asked him if he was alright. Payne replied in the affirmative and seemed to come back into the reality of the moment.

“I guess we took a bit of a hit there,” was his only comment, “is everyone else okay?”

Thompson reassured him that everyone was alive and kicking but told him of the damage to the aircraft. Before he went back to his own position, ‘Doc’ warned him to be on the lookout for any additional damage and to be ready to bail out at a moment’s notice, if necessary. On the way rearward, ‘Tommy’ stopped just behind Stevens and shouted to him: “Doc’s okay!” Stevens gave a silent thumbs up in response.

The aircraft was still handling very sluggishly, and the pilot wasn’t at all happy. He already knew that he’d been hit in the port wing and that the port aileron was no longer whole. He gingerly began to test each of the other flight controls, measuring their reactions against what he innately felt as ‘normal.’ He immediately noticed the rudder’s loss of effectiveness, but he could live with that. What concerned him much more was the lack of elevator authority, necessary to raise or lower the nose. He wondered whether he hadn’t lost part or all of that critical control surface. By far the most dire thought, however, was that of the leaking fuel’s catching fire and the remaining high octane in the tanks exploding. As a precaution, Stevens decided that it would be safer to drop below 10,000 feet, the safe bail-out altitude without oxygen bottles. He immediately reduced engine power while dropping the nose ever so slightly. This combination would decrease altitude while not increasing airspeed enough to endanger the damaged aircraft.

“Tommy to Steve, we seem to be losing small bits and pieces of things. I’m seeing debris go by the Tin on the Port side.”

While all of this had been happening, Stevens had also been thinking ahead. He had made the required turn to the north and was on the verge of clearing the target area. Then another flash of blinding light hit them, this time a constant beam. Moving this slowly and clearing the flak zone, they would soon fall victim to the fighters. Weighing the possibilities and knowing England to be unattainable, he turned his thoughts to the safety of his men. They were now clear of the worst of the flak. Facing the fighters would be suicide, whereas life as a prisoner of war was still life. Calmly but resolutely, he made the fateful call, “Pilot to crew, abandon aircraft! Bail out, bail out!” To himself, he gave them his blessing, “Thanks chaps, you’ve done everything you could. Now, go while you still can. Good luck to you all, and be safe.”

 

Here is a review of Marc's book in the Daily Express.

Well done, Marc.

http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/144427/Bravery-of-the-German-Jew-who-flew-RAF-bombers-over-his-homeland/