Being in Britain’s Royal Air Force was not just Johnny Johnson’s way of getting back at Hitler. It had also, for the first time, given him a family
thing, thought Johnny Johnson—once it was nose up, and they were racing for the Dutch coast—was that there had been no one there. They had set off late on this mission, on May 16th 1943, well after the two other formations of Lancaster bombers in 617 Squadron had gone. But at their target, the Sorpe dam at the heart of the German Ruhr, the skies were empty. In the brilliant moonlight the dam shone, intact. Not only was no one else attacking it at the time, but clearly no one had started.
Besides, he loved doing it. He doubled as a spare gunner, manning a Browning .303-calibre machinegun, but nothing matched the thrill of the bomb-aimer’s work. It paid better, too: 12/6d a week, against 7/6d for a gunner. He naturally watched the pennies, because he had grown up poor. His father was a farm worker, ignorant and brutal, who would beat him with a leather razor-strop when something hadn’t been done right.
On May 16th, though, their aircraft was a different one. It was touch and go. On the way, one gunner tried a Browning burst on an armoured train; the shell sent in reply burst a tyre and pierced a wing. On the way back, they ran into fierce flak above the Hamm railway yards. As for the bombing, it was lucky he was blessed with patience. Nine times they flew the length of the Sorpe dam, but failed to make the drop at the right spot at the exact time.
It was harder to talk about the raid itself. For a single operation, the losses were terrible. Around 1,600 people had drowned, mostly Soviet slave labourers. He would rather they were Nazis, but his focus was on his own side. Of 19 planes sent, three had turned back and eight had been lost. Of the 133 crew, 53 had not returned. In the bars back at base the mood of 617 Squadron was commiseration rather than celebration.
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