Another firing pass from astern set the bomber’s starboard engine on fire, from which streaming glycol covered the Hurricane windscreen and obscured Stevens’ view. Once more he dropped back, slid back the cockpit hood and wiped the screen clear with his glove before closing to a hundred yards where, buffeted by the slipstream, he hit the Heinkel with another burst. With both engines on fire now, the bomber dived steeply towards the cloud layer with Plt Off Stevens catching it with a final burst as he followed it down. The stricken bomber went through the cloud but having lost sight of it, he headed back to Wittering. In a sortie lasting just sixty-six minutes he had only twenty-five rounds left in each of seven guns, the eighth gun having jammed early in the fight. His claim for two Heinkels destroyed was later confirmed. The first Heinkel was identified as 1G+FK from I/KG27, which crashed near Wellesbourne in Warwickshire, and the second was G1+DL from I/KG55 that crashed near Desford, Leicestershire. This was the second time Plt Off Stevens had brought down two enemy aircraft in one night.
Night fighter air gunners – and for that matter, AI operators – tend to be overlooked by many writers (but not, I am sure, by their own pilots!) when it comes to handing out credit for shooting down enemy aeroplanes. Let it be made absolutely clear then that, in the world of two-seat night fighters, success in the air was due to teamwork, with the end result coming down to the shooting ability of an air gunner or the keen eye and mental agility of an AI radar operator, just as much as to those same qualities in the pilot of a night fighter. No better example can be found to illustrate the part played by an air gunner than by looking at the following typical Defiant Fighter Night sortie.
On the same night that Richard Stevens flew the sortie mentioned above, 151 Squadron also sent several of its Defiant aircraft to patrol Coventry. Flt Lt Desmond McMullen with air gunner Sgt Sam Fairweather was one of these, leaving Wittering at 00.50 on April 9 to circle the city at his allotted altitude of 17,000 feet. It was an uneventful patrol and as the end of his hour approached without a sniff of the enemy, McMullen received the call to return to base. He circled the city one more time, losing altitude to 13,000 feet ready to head back to Wittering. Suddenly, silhouetted against bright moonlight, he saw the shape of a Heinkel He111 going south, crossing his track about 400 yards ahead. McMullen brought the Defiant in under the port wing of the bomber and at seventy-five yards range Sgt Fairweather let go a three-second burst into the fuselage, followed by a long five-second burst into the cockpit area as the Defiant overshot. Keeping the range to between fifty and a hundred yards McMullen clung to the Heinkel as it twisted and turned, making for a cloud layer down at 6,000 feet. Now handicapped by a reflector sight that kept jumping from fully-dim to fully-bright and with one of his four .303 guns jammed, Fairweather managed to fire a two-second burst into the bomber’s belly before it disappeared into cloud south of Coventry, going down vertically with smoke pouring from both engines. Since Fairweather was having problems with his weapons, McMullen did not hang about and landed back at Wittering at 02.04. It seems that the 600 rounds expended may, with the possible intervention of AA fire for good measure, have contributed to the demise of Heinkel He111 G1+LS from III/KG55 which crashed in Windsor Great Park about twenty-five minutes later.
In just one year since that chaotic air battle of June 18/19 1940 the night air war over England had developed dramatically. By June 1941 the process of interception had become, by necessity, a technological war run by men working flickering black boxes, operating within an integrated air/ground system. Here is an example of just how much things had changed.
At fifteen minutes past midnight on Sunday June 22 1941, an all-black Junkers Ju88C-2 night fighter, coded R4+JH, werk nummer 0827, of the Luftwaffe’s specialist night intruder unit, Nachtjagdgeschwader 2 (NJG2), took off from its base at Gilze-Rijen, in Holland, for a mission over England. For the crew, Oberfeldwebel Otto Weise (pilot), Gefreiter Hermann Mandel (flight engineer) and Unteroffizier Heinrich Beul (radio operator/gunner), it was the latest of many such sorties, which had made them old hands at their deadly game of hide and seek.
The Junkers pilot is an example of an experienced airman – just like RAF aircrew at the start of the war – trained over many years in a peacetime situation. Aged nineteen, Otto Weise had joined the pre-war German flying service in July 1933, training at various locations as the embryo Luftwaffe evolved into its wartime shape. His first operational posting was to the Zerstörerstaffel of Kampfgeschwader 30 (Z/KG30) in February 1940, based at Stavanger during the Norwegian campaign. It was with this unit that he filed his only kill, a Wellington – claimed but unsubstantiated – as shot down into the North Sea on July 23 1940 (just before he was posted to I/NJG2 on July 28 1940). Otto was awarded the Iron Cross (First Class) in May 1941.
The Ju88 crew’s task that night was to roam above the airfields of Lincolnshire, seeking out unwary RAF aircraft and sending them to their doom. RAF inspectors were later to find that the armament installed for this purpose on this particular aircraft was concentrated in the ‘solid’ nose and consisted of one MG FF (a drum-fed 20mm cannon), and three belt-fed MG17, 7.92mm machine guns. Four drums each containing sixty rounds of 20mm ammunition were found on board. In addition, the Junkers carried two MG15 (7.92mm) guns in the crew compartment and eight 50kg bombs plus a small quantity of incendiaries, the latter to plaster over any aerodrome foolish enough to show a gleam of light. On this fateful night, however, it was to be the German crew that would be despatched from the Fenland sky, to meet a fiery end at the hands of one of the RAF’s most successful night fighter squadrons.
Unteroffizier Beul, on his ninth sortie over England, became the sole survivor from the Junkers crew and as he recalled many years later, anti-aircraft guns and searchlights, normally active when they were detected crossing the English coast, were unusually quiet that night – an ominous sign that RAF night fighters were probably lurking in wait for incoming raiders.
Just before midnight that same night, Flying Officer Michael Herrick, a New Zealand pilot with 25 Squadron, together with his radar operator Pilot Officer Yeomans, was lining up R2277, a Merlin-engined Beaufighter II, call-sign ‘Cockle 22’, on the long runway at RAF Wittering. Less than two hours later they would be locked in a battle for survival in the dark sky above the south Lincolnshire village of Market Deeping.
Fg Off Herrick, also a seasoned campaigner in his deadly trade, was already credited with the destruction of four enemy aeroplanes in night actions, including two in one sortie, in the nine months since the Blitz had begun. For this success, achieved in slow, poorly-armed Blenheims and without the aid of radar, he had been awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross.
Instructed to patrol at 12,000 feet, north of The Wash, he eased open the throttles of his twin Merlins and thundered off into the starlit night. Once airborne, control of the Beaufighter was handed over to Orby GCI, an installation located a few miles west of Skegness, equipped with Air Ministry Experimental Station (AMES) intermediate type 8 radar apparatus. After an uneventful hour and a half, Herrick was given several course changes towards the general direction of Wittering and told to reduce altitude to 9,000 feet as there was some trade in the vicinity. At 01.10, while losing height, Plt Off Yeomans picked up a target trace on the twin display tubes of his Mark IV Airborne Interception radar set (AI Mk IV) and Herrick set off in chase. Their target was heading inland from the direction of The Wash. A four-minute, AI-guided chase and there it was – an aircraft flying south at 9,000 feet, dead ahead and a couple of hundred feet below, with the Beaufighter in a perfect attacking position. Herrick at once turned to port to bleed off speed then approached the target, which was travelling at about 180mph, from below and behind. Closing gently now to one hundred yards range, Fg Off Herrick, without the aid of any moonlight, believed his bandit was a Heinkel He111. Being uncertain though and unable to manoeuvre to get it silhouetted against any northern light, with a calmness for which he was renowned, he slowly overtook the aircraft and drew al
ongside at about one hundred yards abeam. In the cold light of morning, events would confirm the bandit as a Ju88 but with just a silhouette, a single fin and four exhaust flames to go on – and the prospect of being hit by machine-gun fire at any second – Herrick was confident enough just to confirm it as a hostile to his controller and drop back to his attacking position.
All this time – although only a few minutes in reality – the Beaufighter remained undetected by the enemy, but at the instant Herrick opened fire with his four 20mm cannon, the enemy plunged into a diving turn to starboard. Beul had spotted something but his shouted warning to the pilot came too late to save them. Herrick clung tenaciously to the German’s tail. Throwing caution to the wind and spurning the reflector sight in order to keep his prey in view, he pressed the firing button again, this time holding it down, in his own words “… using the guns like a hosepipe”. Flashes of cannon strikes could be seen exploding all over the enemy aircraft and fuel tanks in the starboard wing were ruptured and caught fire. Otto dived to try to subdue the flames but to no avail. Having dropped to 7,000 feet, the Junkers was rocked by a fierce explosion inside the fuselage. Circling, it continued to burn and as Herrick was about to put in a decisive burst of gunfire, another explosion jolted the stricken machine. At this point it plunged to earth in a fiery spiral, crashing into a wheat field on Haines Farm, Backgate, Deeping St James, not far from the village church. Although heavily censored, local newspapers carried sensational, jingoistic accounts of the combat itself.
Residents in several villages gathered in the roads in the warm night and in the clear starlit sky had a thrilling view… a terrific dogfight, witnessed by hundreds of people, many of whom had dashed from their houses in their night attire … . . . when the enemy fighter went down, the British fighter performed the victory roll.
There was no time for rejoicing in the sky though and Herrick and Yeomans continued their patrol, but with no more contacts they returned to Wittering at 02:45 hours.
This was the first occasion on which 25 Squadron had used a Merlin-engine Beaufighter with success, but in his combat report Fg Off Herrick commented: “the extra engine power and speed is not considered beneficial at the heights flown during this particular engagement.” He fired a total of 181 rounds of 20mm ammunition to despatch this Ju88. Beaufighter Mk II, R2277, had been allocated to the squadron for operational evaluation but was struck off charge on June 26 after a month’s trial and no further examples of this mark appeared on the squadron strength.
Meanwhile, inside that burning Junkers, Beul and his companion, Mandel, tried in vain to extinguish the flames. Otto Weise, no longer able to control the aircraft in its headlong dive towards the ground, gave the order to bale out. In the frantic seconds that followed, Beul jettisoned the cockpit hood, stood on his seat and dived out. His parachute cracked open with a jerk and he floated safely to earth. Mandel was all but engulfed by flames and his parachute caught fire. When he jumped out of the aircraft the tattered, burning canopy failed to support him and he fell to his death. Pilot Otto Weise perished in the wreckage of his aeroplane.
Looking about him as he fell, Beul could see the Welland river glinting below and even had the presence of mind to inflate his lifejacket because he thought he might land in the water! In the event the wind carried him well past the river and he came down on the outskirts of Northborough village, as did the unfortunate Mandel. While he was still about a hundred feet in the air he saw a group of people converging on him and a member of the Home Guard captured him just as soon as his feet touched the ground. According to the local newspaper report, Beul offered no resistance and walked quietly with his captors to the Home Guard’s house nearby, where he was offered food. He refused everything except a glass of water and would only drink that after he had seen the soldier taste it first then, after some first aid on an injured arm, he was driven off into custody at RAF Wittering.
It was during this stage of his captivity that the final act of this ferocious combat was played out. Beul, by now feeling the effect of his ghastly experience, was unable to eat any food offered by his captors. It can only be imagined what thoughts passed through his mind when the door of his cell opened and he was introduced to Fg Off Herrick, his recent tormentor. What were Herrick’s thoughts too, on coming face to face with his vanquished foe, a fellow flyer?
Beul went on his way later, to an interrogation centre and thence to POW camp. Michael James Herrick flew more night fighter patrols, received a bar to his DFC and advanced to the rank of squadron leader. He was killed on June 16 1944, shot down into the sea off Denmark, while flying with 302 Squadron on a Day Ranger sortie.
There is a sting in the tail of this story. The Lincolnshire Free Press of July 11 1989 carried a headline ‘Bomb Found’ under which was the story of bomb disposal officers – ironically also from RAF Wittering – being called out to deal with a 50kg World War 2 bomb. It had been discovered in a field at Haines Farm in Backgate, Deeping St James by a group of aviation archaeologists from RAF Henlow while they were in the process of recovering the remains of the Ju88 for preservation. The bomb was declared too unstable to move and after the few local residents nearby had been evacuated, it was blown up where it lay.
Immediately after the Junkers had crashed in 1941 an RAF intelligence team inspected the site, as was the custom, gleaning whatever information they could about the construction and performance of enemy aircraft by sifting through the wreckage. Their report, now open to public view, states that six 50kg bombs were recovered from the site and that at least one bomb may have exploded on impact. In 1989 another turned up, making a total of eight. Heinrich Beul has been quoted as stating eight 50kg bombs were loaded onto the Junkers that night – so perhaps that deadly cargo has been accounted for at long last.
The night sky in wartime was certainly no place for chivalry… ...but how did it all start?
CHAPTER 2
Zeppelin!
In World War 1, the night sky over England resounded not to the beat of Junkers, BMW or Daimler-Benz engines but to the menacing throb of Maybach engines propelling enormous Zeppelin airships through the darkness.
Initially reluctant to unleash his bombers, early in January 1915 Kaiser Wilhelm, under pressure from his Military High Command, at last authorised his navy – responsible for operating a large part of the German airship (Luftschiff) force – to mount air raids on Britain. At first ordering such attacks to be limited to coastal, dock and other military targets, the Kaiser stipulated none must be directed at central London. This strategy, soon revised to include the capital, was initially one of several factors that accounted for the Midlands being visited in one way or another by a relatively high proportion (20%) of German airship raids on England during that conflict.
Zeppelin! The very word itself struck fear into the hearts of the British population. In reality though, the people knew very little of such machines, instead from propaganda circulating since the outbreak of war, they had acquired a rather exaggerated perception of their effect. Since the turn of the century, while Count Ferdinand Von Zeppelin developed the rigid airships that bore his name for military as well as civil purposes, Britain lacked a comparable programme. Germany had quickly recognised the military potential of lighter-than-air craft as long-range reconnaissance machines and bombers. The British Government, on the other hand, subscribed to the view that heavier-than-air aeroplanes had more military value in a reconnaissance role, than for bombing on the limited scale then envisaged.
That Zeppelins were able to wander relatively freely through night-time British skies caused much consternation at the War Office. Soon it became evident, however, that air navigation at night for friend and foe alike, unless aided by good weather and moonlight, was open to considerable error. Radio direction finding equipment was unreliable and navigation relied on nautical dead reckoning techniques which, given the poor meteorological information available to flyers, is another factor that resulted in incursions into provincial a
irspace accessible from around The Wash.
Prior to this Zeppelin problem becoming a stark reality, two respected British airmen (among many others) whose names are familiar from the pre-war powered flying and ballooning era, were called upon to help assess the feasibility of enemy airships being able to locate targets in England at night. B C Hucks, a renowned pre-WW1 pioneering aviator commissioned as 2nd Lieutenant in the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) in August 1914 and N F Usborne, a former balloon pilot, later to be Wing Commander, Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS), separately undertook some of this test work. The findings of this investigative flying during the months immediately following the outbreak of war included the opinion that, on dark nights, or in fog, or cloudy conditions, it was only possible to locate major, blacked-out conurbations by flying strict compass courses from an identified way-point. It might also be possible to follow prominent rivers if these, too, could be seen and identified. Furthermore, it was considered that bombing under such conditions and from the altitudes anticipated would be very inaccurate. In practice these opinions seem to be borne out by the methods and failures of subsequent Zeppelin raids. The British War Office was probably lulled into a false sense of security by this evidence, as nearly two years elapsed before the increasing frequency and size of enemy air raids eventually forced a reorganisation of British night air defence.
No Place for Chivalry Page 3