The lost figure topped two hundred and skipped to two hundred and nine within a minute.
Harris stood, his shocked entourage rising sluggishly to follow. Indicating that they should remain, the Commander of Bomber Command removed himself to his office, in order to start the painful process of informing the Allied leadership that his command had been devastated and would be out of the mainstream of combat for some time to come.
After the phone calls, Harris wrote out his letter of resignation and passed it into the mail room on his way back to see the latest numbers.
With only a few aircraft still in the sky, the board made awful reading.
Two hundred and forty-nine confirmed losses, each loss marking the death, injury or capture of a crew.
Down and safe were five hundred and ten.
One hundred and thirty bombers were yet to be accounted for.
A quick look at the squadron boards revealed five virgin white and blank, the tellers either waiting anxiously for news or devastated, having had the very worst sort.
A wave of calls flooded into the centre, as more bombers made safety, either in England or airfields through France and the Low Countries.
Air-sea rescue launches were hard at work in the North Sea and Channel, Royal Naval MTB’s and the like pressed into service to help.
An incredible headache overtook Harris, and he sought out his private quarters for some rest, before beginning the piecing together the events of the night.
The true cost of Operation ‘Casino’ was not fully appreciated for some time.
All in all, five hundred and ninety-one bombers returned home, some untouched, some badly knocked about.
Two hundred and sixty-nine aircraft had been confirmed as lost, some over Germany or crashed in friendly territory. Some fell apart just short of their home runways, and more ditched in the North Sea, consigned to a watery end.
A Short Stirling, recently returned to operations from mothballs, savaged by flak and flying blindly, eventually succumbed to its wounds and crashed outside the German village of Marbeck. Unfortunately for the Allies, it landed on top of the 14th Nebelwerfer Regiment, part of the deploying German Republican forces. Casualties were extreme, both in men and materiel.
Another RAF bomber, a Lancaster III, badly damaged and abandoned by her crew, finally came to earth in Groningen, destroying an orphanage, and causing over two hundred civilian deaths.
Such events were not confined to the Allied side of the lines, as a brand-new Avro Lincoln I came to ground in a field on the northern bank of the Hemmelsdorfer See, destroying itself, and spreading its remaining load of fuel all over the headquarters of the Soviet 22nd Army, sending the entire Soviet Army’s hierarchy into a fiery Valhalla.
There were twenty-nine bombers still missing, and it was some days before several aircraft were reported as landing safely as far away as Sweden, Switzerland and Finland, where they were interned.
Eight Squadrons had been totally wiped out
After the war, RAF investigations were unable to progress all the remaining twenty-one missing and many of the unresolved losses were only put to bed by accidental discovery or the intensive work of historians, decades later.
To date, six aircraft remain unaccounted for.
Soviet losses totalled five night-fighters, sixty-seven AA guns of varying types and five hundred and sixty-three casualties.
The reactions in Nordhausen and Versailles could not have been more different.
Elation and celebration.
Shock and horror.
Nazarbayeva awoke and stretched contentedly, her eyes taking in the dimly illuminated room and all it had to offer.
The small vase on the drawer unit, placed there earlier by a giggling Nurse Lubova, in response to a woman to woman request, its simple woodland flowers offering up the promise of rich colours even in the low light.
The top secret folder lay to one side, a single fallen petal casting its modest shadow on the label. Inside were details on the progress of her misinformation programme, and how it was to bear fruit in the skies over Northern Germany that very night.
A neatly hung uniform, that of a full Colonel of the GRU, proudly topped by the Gold Star, sharing the recently arrived clothes stand with that of a much-decorated Starshina of the Red Army.
The armchair where they had sat together, and talked of the loss of their son.
At the window, the silhouette of her husband, naked, toned, still damp with the sweat of their exertions.
“Yuri.”
Her husband turned and smiled.
“Ah, my wife awakes. How you can just drop off to sleep like that amazes me, my sweet.”
The sheet was in her hands and she raised it to her face, only her eyes exposed and full of mischief, her voice that of a new bride on her first night.
“Your exertions exhausted me, my husband. You are so powerful and needy.”
He smiled again, deciding whether or not to play the game. The mischievous soldier-husband nearly won, but the needy lover-husband proved too strong.
“Needy, my sweet?”
He took hold of the sheet and pulled it gently down, liberating her face, then her shoulders, before travelling all the way and settling on the floor at the foot of the bed.
“How can I look at such beauty and not need, not want, not desire?”
His silhouette altered in such a way that Tatiana merely beckoned him forward and onto the bed, opening her legs and entwining him as he slipped inside her and they started making love for the third time.
Harris replaced the red receiver, breathing a sigh of relief.
His resignation was not accepted and he would be left in charge of the recovery and re-assembly of Bomber Command.
The preliminary written report was on his desk, and had formed the basis of his telephone conversation with Prime Minister Clement Attlee.
In truth, the figures were beyond comprehension.
Two hundred and seventy-five aircraft now confirmed lost, and along with them over one and a half thousand air crew, either dead, maimed or prisoners.
‘Unmitigated disaster.’
That had been Attlee’s shocked understatement, wholly accurate, but insufficient to carry the weight of the terrible events.
Whilst restoring his command was his number one priority there was undoubtedly another matter which needed addressing.
Standing up and turning to the window, he looked into a cloudless sky and asked a question of no-one in particular.
“How did they know we were coming?”
A question that was already taxing other minds across Europe.
Attlee replaced the receiver with extreme care, his face white, the news he had just been given so appalling as to beggar belief.
Not in even the darkest days of the German War had such losses, so many young men, been taken by the Gods of War.
His hands were trembling, hindering his efforts to charge his pipe.
The other occupant of the room waited silently, knowing that the Prime Minister would reveal all when he was ready.
That did not prevent Sir Richard Percival Carruthers, Attlee’s personal private secretary, from acting to precipitate the conversation.
He placed a healthy measure of single malt in front of his leader, sampling his own, his concern mounting as he watched the shaken man consume his with unusual speed.
The silence continued, even after Carruthers had supplied a refill, the PM’s mind occupied solely with working through the problem.