Chapter 9
Mission 27: Essen
March 26, 1944The night was perfect: high cloud, a heavy mist, no wind. Tough to fly in, but it meant a smaller threat of fighters. The weather was just barely good enough for flying, and with the advancing spring Chopper Harris was anxious to send them on as many missions as he could before the nights became too short for them to hit Germany and return under cover of darkness.
They called him Bomber Harris in the papers, but to the aircrew he was Chopper Harris—Arthur Harris, the chief of all Bomber Command. It was on his say-so that a thousand bombers took off each night, and they flew to the city of his personal choosing. Del found it hard to decide what he thought of this state of affairs; on the one hand, he had heard that Harris cared very much about th
