destination. I had fetched forty percent more dust than Ridpath calculated would be
needed for the mission and my last job was to see to it that every canister actually
went on board a plane of the flight. The extremely small weight of dust used was
emphasized to each of the military observers.
We took off just at dark, climbed to twenty-five thousand feet, refueled in
the air, and climbed again. Our escort was waiting for us, having refueled thirty
minutes before us. The flight split into thirteen groups, and cut the thin air for
middle Europe. The bombers we rode had been stripped and hiked up to permit the
utmost maximum of speed and altitude.
Elsewhere in England, other flights had taken off shortly before us to act
as a diversion. Their destina
tions were every part of Germany; it was the intentio to create such confusion in
the air above the Reich th2 our few planes actually engaged in the serious wor might
well escape attention entirely, flying so high i the stratosphere.
The thirteen dust carriers approached Berlin fnoi different directions,
planning to cross Berlin as if fo lowing the spokes of a wheel. The night was
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apprech bly clear and we had a low moon to help us. Berlin: not a hard city to
locate, since it has the largest squan mile area of aiiy modern city and is located
on a broa flat alluvial plain. I could make out the River Spree a we approached it,
and the Havel. The city was blacke out, but a city makes a different sort of black
froi open country. Parachute flares hung over the city i many places, showing that
the R. A. F. had been bus before we got there and the A. A. batteries on tli ground
helped to pick out the city.
There was fighting below us, but not within fiftee thousand feet of our
altitude as nearly as I could judg~ The pilot reported to the captain, “On line of
bearing!” The chap working the absolute altimeter stea ily fed his data into the
fuse pots of the canister. Tli canisters were equipped with a light charge of blac
powder, sufficient to explode them and scatter tF dust at a time after release
predetermined by the fu5 pot setting. The method used was no more than an e ficient
expedient. The dust would have been almost a effective had it simply been dumped out
in paper bag although not as well distributed.
The Captain hung over the navigator’s board, slight frown on his thin sallow
face. “Ready one!” r ported the bomber.
“Release!”
“Ready two!”
The Captain studied his wristwatch. “Release!” “Ready three!”
“Release!”
When the last of our ten little packages was out of the ship we turned tail
and ran for home.
No arrangements had been made for me to get home; nobody had thought about
it. But it was the one thing I wanted to do. I did not feel badly; I did not feel
much of anything. I felt like a man who has at last screwed up his courage and
undergone a serious operation; it’s over now, he is still numb from shock but his
mind is relaxed. But I wanted to go home.
The British Commandant was quite decent about it; he serviced and manned my
ship at once and gave me an escort for the offshore war zone. It was an expensive
way to send one man home, but who cared? We had just expended some millions of lives
in a desperate attempt to end the war; what was a money expense? He gave the
necessary orders absentmindedly.
I took a double dose of nembutal and woke up in Canada. I tried to get some
news while the plane was being serviced, but there was not much to be had. The
government of the Reich had issued one official news bulletin shortly after the
raid, sneering at the much vaunted “secret weapon” of the British and stating that a
major air attack had been made on Berlin and several other cities, but that the
raiders had been driven off with only minor damage. The current Lord Haw-Haw started