Derek Robinson - Damned Good Show

“So that’s one problem,” Tom Stuart said.

“The other thing is very, very unlikely. We’ve been issued with what’s called the Long Delay pistol.” He showed them one. “For when your bomb does not immediately explode.” He stared at Langham. “Now what would be the point of that?”

“To annoy Jerry’s civil defense people,” Langham said. “Bomb goes off hours later.”

“Or maybe sooner. There’s a nose fuse that’s very sensitive. The German bomb disposal laddies disturb it. Detonation occurs.”

“Tough on them,” Stuart said. “Not us. Until the bomb gets armed, that fuse is harmless.”

“So it is, squadron leader.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

“In theory, there’s a very remote possibility that the arming device could be activated prematurely, while loading the bomb on the aircraft. Now, if its Long Delay pistol was set for, say, six hours…”

It was too late for Stuart to stop the discussion. “You’re saying it would explode six hours later. Perhaps during flight.”

“In theory. Not on this squadron, of course. My men take every precaution. No risk at all here.”

“Okay, that’s enough,” Stuart said. “This lecture’s over.”

The crews walked briskly away, glad of the exercise.

“That was a bloody stupid thing to tell them,” Stuart said.

“You asked what could go wrong.”

“And what we could do about it. There’s damn all my boys can do about Long Delay pistols except worry. Thank you very bloody much.”

“No mistake will happen here.”

“How d’you know? How d’you know Gurnee’s bombs didn’t blow him up two days ago, over the North Sea?”

“Gurnee was lost on a shipping strike. Long Delay pistols are never used for a shipping strike. You want detonation on impact.”

“In theory.” Stuart turned and strode away.

A hundred yards away, Silk said, “He picked us out. Did you notice? First me, then you. He was sending a message.”

“What do Long Delay bombs look like?” Langham asked. “Do they look any different?”

“Dunno. And for Christ’s sake don’t ask him. You might put ideas in his stupid head.”

All over Britain the blackout was complete. No streetlights; all bus and train windows painted blue; vehicle headlamps masked so that only a gleam escaped. Shops rapidly sold out of torch batteries. Pedestrians walked blindly through the night, colliding with lampposts, telephone poles, trees, and each other. Also with moving vehicles. There was no change in speed limits, and so twice as many British people were killed on the roads in wartime than in peace. It got worse as the nights grew longer. The war might be phony but the death toll was real.

Tucked away in the calm and quiet of Lincolnshire, where the biggest hazard on the roads was a rocketing pheasant or partridge, RAF Kindrick was relatively safe. Shame about Stubby Gurnee, but replacements soon arrived. Life went on.

Then the teleprinter clattered, and an order came down from Group HQ. With immediate effect, all Hampden aircraft carrying out training flights or air tests would do so with a full bombload, to duplicate operational conditions. It made sense; as Pug Duff pointed out, a crew should train the way it was going to have to fight. Even Langham agreed. He didn’t trust Black Mac, he thought the man was capable of hiding delayed-action thunderflashes in the kite, timed to go off at ten thousand feet. That was ludicrous, of course; he wasn’t so stupid as to play the fool with his own career. But Langham worried all the same. And he had one final air test to do. It was on the morning of his wedding.

His Hampden was D-Dog. He’d flown Dog for months; she was his, she had no vices, he was proud of her. So were his ground crew. A sergeant rigger had checked the control cables and noticed that two had stretched slightly. This worried him. Control cables linked the pilot’s hands and feet to the control surfaces: to the ailerons in the wings, to the elevators and rudders in the tail. Slack cables took the edge off performance. The sergeant made adjustments.

Strictly speaking, Langham was off duty. Rafferty had given him four days’ leave to get married. But Dog was his Hampden and he didn’t trust anyone else to do the air test. So after breakfast he lowered himself into the cockpit, with his observer in front and two gunners behind, and slightly less than a ton of bombs beneath.

At once he felt comfortable and confident. He was at home in D-Dog, within easy reach of all the taps and switches. This was the office. It had an old familiar smell of oil and leather.

Earlier, he had walked around the bomber, counted the engines, kicked the tires, manipulated the rudders. Now he went through the pre-flight test sequence, a routine as familiar as shaving. The ground crew were watching, waiting. He switched on the ignition and the starter magneto. He pressed the starter button for the port engine while the ground crew primed its induction system. The propeller kicked and jerked and suddenly spun as the Pegasus roared and belched black exhaust, and the airplane vibrated. The starboard engine started just as easily. He watched and waited for a few seconds. When he was sure they were both firing steadily he switched off the magneto. The ground crew screwed down the priming pump. Now the whole aircraft was pressed against its chocks, eager to go. He did the warm-up checks—hydraulic system, brake pressure—and then tested airscrews and superchargers and magnetos. He opened the throttles until the engines were howling for release, and he checked boost and oil pressure. All was well. He closed the throttles, waved the chocks away, eased the brakes off, and taxied slowly to the end of the runway. Over-eager pilots taxied too fast, got the tail wheel jammed in a rut, ripped holes in the rear end. Not wise.

Now he did the Final Drill. Hydraulic power control: on. Trim tabs: neutral. Mixture: normal. Pitch: fully forward. Fuel: cock settings and contents correct. Flaps: select down eighteen degrees. Superchargers: M ratio. Gills: both cowlings closed.

All okay. He looked again at the wings. The starboard flap often came down faster than the port flap, which made their angles unequal. But not today.

One last and definitely final check. He turned the control wheel from side to side and watched the ailerons respond. He called the upper gunner on the intercom, and played the rudder bar with his feet. The upper gunner confirmed that the twin rudders and the elevators were moving freely. “Anything behind us?” Langham asked. Once, during Initial Training, he’d seen an airplane take off quite literally in the shadow of another machine that was trying to land. Unforgettable. “Nothing in the sky, skipper,” the gunner said.

Now they could go. It was only an air test, up and down in half an hour, but Langham never took chances with cockpit drills. Killing yourself by bombing a battleship through flak as thick as soup was one thing. Falling out of the sky because you forgot to open or shut a tap was plain foolish.

Control shone a green light.

The brakes came off as the throttles were opened. A Hampden’s body looked like a suitcase but it had wings like a buzzard, and at eighty-five miles an hour Langham gave the control column a firm backward pull and D-Dog stopped pounding the grass and rose as if gravity had suddenly quit. The raucous howl softened to a sweet and steady roar. He raised the undercarriage and let the speed build to one hundred and twenty before he began a serious climb. At a thousand feet he raised the flaps. Dog, perfectly balanced, responded to every touch.

Ahead stood Lincoln cathedral, the biggest thing in the county, so Langham flew there.