‘Maximum effort’ had been called for, and Sir Arthur ‘Bomber’ Harris had moved heaven and earth to get the maximum amount of high-explosive into the air.
Aircraft long removed from the Allied inventory were back in action, crewed by anyone qualified to sit in an aircraft. Experienced men who had seen all the air war had to offer through to beardless youths on their first mission, all were called on.
The Allied effort was concentrated on a corridor in Northern Germany, a strip of forest running parallel with the River Elbe, particularly focussing on the stretch from Bleckede, through Amt Neuhaus and onto Dömitz.
In an area roughly thirty kilometres long by three kilometres wide lay vast quantities of Soviet materiel and manpower.
Recon flights had been harried, but successfully brought back images showing tracks and camouflaged vehicles spread liberally throughout the forest.
Agents reported seeing fuel storage facilities spring up under the trees, and tanks in their scores feed greedily from them.
More reports spoke of artillery pieces, wheel to wheel in places, lined up as if on parade under the protective canopy of the large green forest.
And soldiers.
Thousands and thousands of soldiers.
The maximum effort of Operation Casino totalled eight hundred and eighty-nine machines put into the air, forming a huge line of multi-engine aircraft all the way from England to the mouth of the Elbe.
The cloud was patchy, and sufficient moonlight broke through for the bomber force to see the Elbe. They used it as a navigational marker to fly by until they were approaching Amt Neuhaus and its environs.
Soviet maskirova had worked, the subterfuge of dummy vehicles and temporary wooden structures doing all that had been hoped for and more.
There were no fuel facilities.
There were no tanks.
No soldiers, leastways not how they had been described in the agent’s reports.
Underneath the bombers lay their target rich bombing area, an area that was virtually empty of troops and vehicles.
However, there were guns lined up wheel to wheel, and thousands of them, although they were not the artillery spoken of in the spy’s reports. There was flak, division after division of it, thousands of anti-aircraft guns brought in to form the sides and end of a funnel down which the RAF and its allies intended to fly.
Mosquito NF30’s swept ahead of the main body, knocking down five Soviet aircraft, a token attempt to get night-fighters into the attack.
The lead Pathfinders marked Blecklede and Besitz, the next group Hitzacker and Vielank, others marked key locations in between as the main force grew closer.
Soviet fire discipline was superb, and the only shells that rose into the night sky came from positions not involved in the secrecy and planning.
The lead bombers adjusted their turn at Lauenburg, bomb doors open, the plan being that they should drop on the line between Bleckede and Besitz, with subsequent waves advancing the bomb line to the south-east.
The Soviet plan was simple.
Shoot them down.
The Soviet AA Divisions reflected the full arsenal available, from the lighter 20mm and 40mm weapons, disposed to protect the others from ground attack sorties, through the 85mm AA guns, finishing with the lethal German 88mm, 105mm, and 128mm weapons, all plentifully supplied, and all directed by German radar sets ‘liberated’ in the Patriotic War.
Eight hundred and eighty-nine aircraft in a bomber stream stretching back to England entered the funnel and started to drop their bombs.
Arranged down the sides of the funnel were the AA guns, radar and searchlights, waiting their chance to strike back.
It had been a relatively easy call to predict the bombing run that the RAF et al would adopt. None the less, more Soviet assets had been put in place to cover two other options.
There were no chances taken.
The command was given, the guns thundered, and night became day.
Aircraft after aircraft was clawed from the sky, more than one exploding viciously as its load detonated.
Messages back to England were garbled and misunderstood, prolonging the agony.
Messages from England to the raid commander went unheeded, the man and his aircraft now on the ground and burning.
The bombers kept coming, dropping their bombs and turning away, as directed by operational orders, a route that took them over concentrations of Soviet AA guns.
Another group was bombing now, advancing the destruction, but paying the price in men and machines.
The night sky was permanently illuminated by exploding shells and burning aircraft.
Here and there a group of parachutes floated down, a crew, whole or in part, escaping death.
Searchlights had joined in, searching the target rich skies for enemy bombers, transforming the skies into a spider’s web into which flies, driven by desperation and courage, continued to fly, even as their comrades died all around them.
Some experienced pilots dived, taking their charges down low to escape the big flak guns. So many of them perished as the 20mm and 40mm weapons joined the killing.
The worrying messages went unheeded, the bomber force’s chain of command smashed as deputy and deputies were hacked from the sky.
The vast quantities of shrapnel in the air started to descend, and more than one AA gunner was killed or wounded by their own sides’ metal.
More bombers arrived, the bravery of the crews incredible in the face of such fire. Courage was a common commodity that night.
A Wing-Commander made an appraisal and got an informative message off to Bomber Command, telling them of the increasing disaster.
Their reply, seeking more information, was not acknowledged, the Wing-Commander’s aircraft already in a fiery dive.
It was Harris himself who acted, aborting the raid with immediate effect and calling his boys home.
Eight hundred and eighty-nine had gone out, and ashen-faced WAAF’s started to accumulate details from radio messages and reports from air bases.
At RAF High Wycombe, the headquarters of Bomber Command, a stark picture was emerging.
A staff officer had organised a written display and running total that was being kept up to date in the main room. Harris and his senior officers watched in horror as the numbers altered minute by minute.
On the left were those aircraft returned to base, down on the ground, and their crews safely in debriefing or drinking away the horrors of the night.
In the middle was the number of aircraft about which no information was available. That number went down when one was added to the ‘returned to base list’ or, more tragically, to the third ‘destroyed’ list.
Harris sat watching, white as a sheet.
‘351, 358, 180.’
Activity increased, flustered men and women reporting to the tellers, who in turn reported back to the marker, the middle-aged WAAF Company Commander, a Flight-Lieutenant equivalent, whose eyes were watery with understanding of the human tragedy behind the numbers.
‘385,324,180.’
The tea had gone cold long ago but Harris sipped it as he watched.
‘394,304,191.’
On the left and right walls, squadron status boards were mounted, from where up to date information was sent across to the numbers tellers.
Harris watched one WAAF replace her telephone receiver and sink to her knees in floods of tears, her board bereft of a single mark.
115 Squadron RAF had nothing left, bar its shocked and appalled ground crew, waiting in vain on a dark runway.
Other boards were similarly bare, bare of all but hope, as the WAAF’s at each waited. Their silent prayers entreated higher powers for some to be spared. Most prayers went unheeded that night.