Bomber (novel) - Plot Summary

Plot Summary

Sam Lambert is an experienced RAF pilot based at an East Anglian bomber station. He has been flying missions over Germany since the start of the war and as he nears his tour's end, he is developing stressful exhaustion. The stress of flying missions is exacerbated by a plot device similar to that found in From Here to Eternity. Lambert is an expert cricket bowler and the station commander needs his participation to assure victory against a rival. Lambert's refusal to do put him at odds with the station commander and an ambitious and unscrupulous flight lieutenant who seeks to force Lambert out of flying by taking his best crewmen and replacing them with poor performers (this chimes with another war movie, Twelve O'Clock High). At the same time, his crew revere him and believe that he is the one factor that will ensure their survival. RAF Bomber Command is organizing a large air raid on Krefeld tonight. We join the bomber crews at rest and in preparation for the ordeal. The men, their planes, weapons, responsibilities, attitudes, thoughts and fears are described in great detail with minute historical accuracy.

There are frequent references to weather conditions, meteorological phenomena and forecasts that add to the foreboding in the plot.

Meanwhile across the Channel in northwest Germany the small market town of Altgarten goes about its daily business, its residents and wartime guests aware of the war's progress but curiously untouched by it. We follow Oberleutnant August Bach returning from leave in Altgarten to his duties at a Freya radar installation on the remote Dutch coast looking out towards England. Bach is a World War I veteran now serving as commander of a radar station charged with detecting and tracking the Tommi Terrorflieger on their night-time raids against the Fatherland and guide by radio Luftwaffe Nachtjäger (nightfighters) to intercept and attack them. The holder of the Pour Le Mérite for heroism, he is symbolic of a more genteel and decidedly non-Nazi background. The counterpoint to this is his son's membership in a Waffen SS unit serving in Russia. He is a widower with a second younger son, looked after by a state provided caregiver.

Back in Altgarten the Bürgermeister (German: "mayor") finalises preparations for his own birthday banquet. It is to be held in a cosy restaurant located in one of the timber-built houses surrounding the medieval town square. We are introduced to the Altgarten TENO (Technische Nothilfe or "Civil Defence") engineers who regularly work heroically in the nearby Ruhr cities following air raids, and the local fire crew, adequate for a small country town but useless against what is to come.

The bombs are loaded into the Lancasters, the German radars are allowed to "warm up", the aircrews adjust their night vision and everyone sits and waits and waits. Superstitions, rites and rituals are respected as the combatants ready themselves. Meanwhile Altgarten's people continue with their day-to-day routines.

Eventually the raid gets under way. The British bomber stream forms up and navigates its dogleg course avoiding known flak concentrations and searchlight batteries. As the bombers are pinpointed by German nightfighters, we discover in the minutest detail how tiny pieces of shrapnel from an 88 mm anti-aircraft shell can destroy one of 750 Lancasters, each costing more than £42,000 at 1943 prices.

Despite the meticulous planning, things go wrong immediately: A Lancaster almost crashes on take-off; a Junkers fighter crashes into the sea after hitting birds over the IJsselmeer; another is shot down by a friendly flak-ship. A pathfinder Mosquito is downed and its marker bombs explode south east of Altgarten; with little flak and clear bombing conditions, Christmas Tree marker pyrotechnics are placed over the marker bombs with unusual accuracy. Creepback ensures that the entire town of 5,000 inhabitants is carpet-bombed by a force designed to destroy a city: a firestorm results.

The author maintains a clinically distanced vantage point, understating and implying the horror of the characters' situations. Even so, the protagonists' injuries and deaths are described in the same detail as the airmen's tactics. Each successive event is clinically dissected and analysed almost as though in slow-motion. As is the case with virtually all of his works, the author does portray some characters' actions as counter-productive to their own cause. By the time the raid is over, Altgarten is destroyed; many of the main characters are dead or have lost those close to them. Despite the attack going terribly wrong, there are no punishments meted out. Lambert - for not playing cricket - is banished from flying, an indignity that he views with mixed emotions.

The book ends with an epilogue which gives details of the later lives of the major characters, some of whom are purportedly still alive at the time of the book's appearance.