No Place for Chivalry

by Alastair Goodrum

  Orby GCI directed Sgts Arnold Hill (pilot) and Ernest Hollis (RO) onto an unidentified ‘single-fin’ enemy aeroplane which they intercepted south-east of Derby at about half-past midnight on the night of May 3/4, but at first sight there is little evidence to support conclusively their claim to have destroyed it. Certainly Sgt Hill fired over 200 cannon and 700 machine-gun rounds at his target, claiming: “I opened fire at 200 yards from dead astern with four cannon and six machine guns. I saw tracer disappear into the E/A and other rounds bounce off into the air. Quite a lot of sparks and what appeared to be red-hot particles shot off the E/A.”

  After last seeing it diving through 10,000 feet so fast, Hill decided not to try to keep up with it, and they didn’t actually observe it crash and neither was a wreck reported near Derby. On a night when nearly 300 RAF fighters across the whole country were seeking an equally large Luftwaffe force it is not surprising that a duplicate claim might be made or, as seems possible in this instance, an enemy bomber loss as yet not attributed to any RAF pilot may be one of those Luftwaffe aeroplanes whose fate was unknown and simply listed as ‘failed to return’.

  As mentioned in a previous chapter, Plt Off Henry Bodien of 151 Squadron put in a claim that same night and he is generally credited with the Heinkel brought down on land at Sharrington near Holt in Norfolk. However, when one reads the details of both engagements, what appear to be two interceptions that began more than a hundred miles apart, may actually have ended quite close together and that could have caused the confusion. From details in Sgt Hill’s combat report it is clear that the action was close to Derby and he adds, “I claim one unidentified E/A as destroyed and learn since that it crashed at Hold [sic] in Norfolk.” In Plt Off Bodien’s running fight he said, “the coast was crossed north of The Wash.” It appears to have carried on out to sea until “the E/A turned towards the coast.” Further firing passes were made until “the E/A was seen by pilot and gunner burning slightly on the sea.” When, in the same report, Plt Off Bodien also says the visibility was good enough to allow him to see the enemy aeroplane exhausts at two miles range, it tends to support his being able to distinguish sea from land – and that his claim was actually a different victim to that usually attributed to him. It seems possible Bodien may have shot down a Ju88 from I/KG806. This scenario thus lends more weight to Sgt Hill’s claim being the Sharrington Heinkel, which may indeed have been hit hard near Derby but managed to stagger nearly to the Norfolk coast before coming down.

  25 Squadron’s next Beaufighter success over The Wash corridor fell to the guns of its CO Wing Commander David Atcherley, in a Mark I, on May 4 1941. Together with his AI operator, Flight Lieutenant John Hunter-Tod, they took off from Wittering at 22.00 hours in R2251, under the control of Langtoft GCI. At 22.30 they were given some ‘trade’ and put onto a series of courses by the controller until Hunter-Tod picked out a target with his airborne set, about two miles ahead. Shortly after, Atcherley gained a visual sighting and began to close in. At an altitude of 12,000 feet and one hundred yards range it was identified as a Ju88 and immediately Wg Cdr Atcherley opened up with two short bursts from the full weight of his four 20mm cannon and six .303 machine guns. The effect was devastating; the cabin of the Junkers exploded in a brilliant flash and the interior of the fuselage caught fire. The enemy aircraft fell into a dive, shedding pieces as it fell. Wg Cdr Atcherley poured in one more burst before breaking away, leaving the stricken aircraft to plunge vertically to the ground. He had fired 189 x 20mm cannon shells and 535 x .303 inch machine-gun rounds in the course of the engagement.

  Such is the tragedy of war that this Junkers, a Ju88A-5, wk nr 3358, coded V4+BS of III Gruppe, Kampfgeschwader 1 (III/KG1), part of a raid heading for Belfast, crashed directly onto the Butcher’s Arms public house in Eastgate, Bourne, Lincolnshire. From the crew, Uffz Adam Becker (pilot) died in the wreckage; Gefr Reinhold Kitzelmann (radio) and Gefr Karl Focke (observer) also died. These latter appear, however, to have baled out as their bodies were found some little distance from the crash, but were probably too low for their parachutes to deploy. The gunner, Gefr Rudolf Dachschel, was slightly injured but escaped by parachute and was made a prisoner of war.

  The wreckage of this Junkers was almost entirely buried in the ruins of the pub and the war was brought suddenly and tragically to this rural community when licensee Charles Lappage, his wife Fanny, together with two relatives staying in the house, Violet Jackson and Minnie Cooper, were killed instantly. In addition, an army officer and two soldiers of the Loyal (North Lancashire) Regiment, billeted in the public house, also died in the explosion. A fourth soldier was lucky to escape even though seriously injured, and five more soldiers in a house opposite were also injured by the blast. Fire prevented rescue parties from working on the building for some time, as when an attempt was made to move debris, flames broke out afresh because the whole site was drenched with petrol.

  There was also a sequel to this combat many years later. Damaged beyond repair, the pub was subsequently pulled down and the site cleared. The area remained empty until 1964 when Lovell’s garage and filling station was built on the vacant plot. The wartime incident came to life again when the new owner brought in an excavator to dig out foundations for a petrol storage tank. Down at a depth of eight feet the digger encountered a heavy object. Climbing out to clear the trouble, the driver got quite a shock when he saw what was clearly the nose of a bomb in the hole. The police were called in and they in turn sent for an RAF bomb disposal team, this time from RAF Newton. The bomb was a 500kg type but fortunately the fuse was not energised – suggesting the aircraft was en route to its destination. In addition to the bomb that was successfully removed, pieces of wiring, fuselage and some machine-gun ammunition were also found.

  David Atcherley achieved prominence in both the pre-war and post-war RAF. Hunter-Tod was also to make his mark in the post-war air force rising, by the time of his retirement in 1973, to the rank of Air Marshal.

  That same night, 25 Squadron was active elsewhere in the region when another Beaufighter, controlled by Orby GCI and piloted by Sgt Kenneth Hollowell with Sgt Richard Crossman as AI operator, engaged two unidentified enemy aircraft north of The Wash. They believed both were damaged by their attack and submitted claims for such. In the early hours of the 5th Sqn Ldr Harold Pleasance with his RO Sgt Bennie Bent, also with the assistance of Orby GCI, claimed a ‘damaged’ in T4629 near Aldeburgh, Suffolk.

  At dawn next morning Norfolk police reported a Junkers Ju88 crash in Welney Wash, south of King’s Lynn, but in view of the relative positions of these incidents it seems unlikely that they are linked. Aircraft of I/KG77 raided Liverpool that night and Leutnant Joachim Wreschnick in Ju88A-5, wk nr 4269, coded 3Z+CL, was on his way home when things started to go wrong. RAF crash inspectors looking over the Welney aircraft found the port engine had failed and burned, but apparently not due to combat action, and the starboard engine also showed signs of damage. The original factory code of DE+ES was visible beneath the standard camouflage paint. The letters CL were marked on the fin tip and painted on the nose beneath the cockpit was a crest bearing a condor in yellow. Subsequent interrogation found that Wreschnick had ordered his crew to abandon the aircraft whereupon Uffz Friedrich Podlesch, Uffz Rudolf Siegmann and Gefr Helmut Pix baled out and were captured unhurt. The pilot decided to stay with his stricken machine and pulled off a successful belly-landing on flat land near the Great Ouse river. On scrambling out of the Junkers he tried, unsuccessfully, to set fire to it by firing his pistol at the fuel tanks, before he too was captured.

  The three who baled out caused a stir for a short time as local researcher Ivan Bevis discovered.

  One of the three crew was discovered by a farm worker near March who looked after him until collected by an army escort. The other two enjoyed a little more freedom but they, too, were eventually picked up.

  Driving along a lonely road out of March, a motorist saw someone walking in the road ahead of him. This was unusual i
n the middle of the night and aroused his suspicion. As he drew nearer, the person turned towards the car and the motorist was shocked to see what was clearly an airman in flying overalls, bearing all the hallmarks of the Luftwaffe. The motorist took one look, turned the car around and headed back to March police station as fast as he could go. A police patrol went out to the spot and apprehended what was indeed a German airman. The final member of the Junkers crew actually strolled along unchallenged and into the town of March itself. Mr D Gipson, a teenage railway messenger in those days, recalled how he came upon an airman in flying clothing in Station Road. The German was acting nervously and stood looking in Fell’s shop window. He spoke to the young lad and having explained to the equally nervous boy who he was he made it clear he wanted to be taken to the police and not a civilian authority. Then calmly the pair went off to the police station where all three airmen were kept in custody until the army arrived.

  Standing patrols continued to be the routine tactic, with the number of aircraft despatched varying according to the expected level of Luftwaffe activity in the sector. In seven nights between May 5/6 and 11/12, the squadron carried out seventy night patrols between the hours of 22.00 and 06.00, each patrol lasting about three hours and overlapping to keep at least two fighters airborne at any one time. During that period twelve interceptions were made, resulting in claims for three E/A destroyed and nine damaged. Four interceptions were controlled by each GCI station at Orby and Langtoft while the remaining four were controlled by the Digby sector operations room and the crews made these interceptions in an area stretching from Aldeburgh on the Suffolk coast to Hull and inland to Grantham.

  As the Luftwaffe crossed the region in force again in the bright moonlight of May 7/8 1941, 25 Squadron was ready for them. Among the attackers was a Dornier Do17Z-10 intruder. Dubbed ‘Kauz II’ (Screech Owl II), this Z-10, wk nr 2843, coded R4+GK of I/NJG2, was a Do17 modified to carry a battery of two MG FF 20mm cannon and four MG17 (7.92mm) machine-gun armament, all fixed in a ‘solid’ nose to fire forward. This night fighter conversion job on the last nine aircraft off the Do17Z-3 production line originally married a Do17 fuselage to a Ju88C-2 cockpit, but it was not a success. Dornier therefore designed a completely new nose with the above-mentioned armament. In an effort to aid night interceptions this new nose was subjected to further modification by the installation of an infra-red sensor, codenamed Spanner-anlage (roughly translated as ‘Peeping Tom equipment’) but it had a poor range and so many practical limitations that only fifteen sets were actually installed operationally. It has been suggested in some quarters that Kauz IIs carried Spanner-anlage on intruder operations in 1941 but the device, built by AEG-Mayer was not developed and tested until 1942.

  For the pilot, Fw Wilhelm Lettenmeier, it was a testing time because it was his first operational night fighter sortie. He was somewhat encouraged though by the presence in the aircraft of Uffz Herbert Thomas, an ‘old hand’ with forty missions to his credit already. Thomas was charged with the task of passing on his experience to new night fighter crews at Gilze-Rijen airfield, in Holland.

  Plt Off David ‘Tommy’ Thompson, from 25 Squadron’s A Flight, with his AI operator Plt Off Dennis Britain, took off from Wittering in R2181 just before midnight to patrol off the Lincolnshire coast under Digby sector control. After an hour they were directed south towards The Wash. While still north of The Wash, however, Britain picked up a contact independently on his own radar set which they chased for a few minutes until Plt Off Thompson was able to spot their target. There, off to port, clearly silhouetted by moonlight against a cloud layer below, was what they both agreed was a Dornier Do215. Easing the Beaufighter down to the enemy’s altitude of 13,000 feet, at one point Thompson realised he was approaching the aircraft too fast and had to close the throttles quickly. This action caused flames to belch from the exhausts and gave away his position to the equally wide-awake enemy crew.

  Eager not to let the chance slip away, Thompson loosed off a short burst at the Dornier’s starboard profile. In that same instant Lettenmeier instinctively reacted to a warning shouted over the intercom and hauled the Dornier over in a steep turn to port, away from his attacker. Thompson followed his quarry in the diving turn, still keeping it at about one hundred yards range. Lettenmeier straightened out, thinking he had shaken off the Beaufighter but it was not so and Thompson, who now had the Dornier firmly in his sight, let fly with two more short bursts of cannon fire in quick succession. First of these hit the nearest, starboard, engine and as the Dornier rolled away to port the second hammered into the underside of the port engine. That engine immediately burst into flames and the enemy aircraft continued to roll over into a downward spiral.

  Inside the Dornier at first pandemonium reigned as exploding cannon shells slammed through the fuselage, filling the interior with lethal flying metal splinters. Each member of the crew was hit but not seriously and quickly discipline and training took control. When the engine caught fire Lettenmeier carried out the well-rehearsed procedure: ignition off, petrol cock off, full throttle to clear out any petrol in the feed pipes and pray! Now the Dornier was in its ever-tightening spiral – pull back on the control column – can’t budge it! Thomas saw Lettenmeier’s frantic actions and lent his strength to try to haul the stricken machine from its headlong plunge, but to no avail. It was Herbert Thomas who saw they had no chance and gave the order to bale out. He saw the third crewman, radio operator Uffz Georg Herden jettison the canopy cover and start to climb out.

  Interviewed many years later, Herbert Thomas said he had little recollection of what happened during the next few seconds but remembered feeling a terrific blow that stunned him and becoming aware of heat from all sides. Above all he felt a lot of pain.

  At first all went quiet, as if he had been drugged, but then the pain came back. He had no sensation of falling through the air and when he regained his senses he found himself lying on the ground beneath his parachute canopy, through which he could discern the ghostly shape of the moon. He joked many years later that the “sight made me think I’d gone to heaven!” He believed that when Herden jettisoned the big top canopy he was dragged out by a suction effect and the blow he took was probably caused when he struck the tailplane.

  Without realising it he must have tugged the ripcord or it caught on something that deployed the parachute and carried him away from the falling aircraft. Herbert Thomas could not remember just how long he lay on the ground in his semi-conscious state, but he heard voices, getting louder as they approached, and soon he was surrounded by a small group of people. The parachute was removed and someone pushed a cigarette between his lips. He drew on this with much relief. He was helped to his feet and hobbled to a waiting car, where he was delighted to find his companion, Georg Herden, thankfully alive. The pair were consigned to the care of local constable, PC Cutts, who broke the news that Willi Lettenmeier was dead. He had baled out too late and his parachute could not save him.

  Thomas had suffered serious injuries in the crash and was taken off to hospital. He remembered waking up on an operating table, feeling quite embarrassed to find a young nurse cutting off his flying overall and uniform. Still dazed, he next awoke from an anaesthetic to find himself encased in plaster and with an armed soldier sitting beside him. That soldier became friendly during the course of Thomas’s stay in hospital and the more so because he shared his Woodbine cigarette ration with the German. “I received good treatment from the hospital staff,” he said, “and since I was in no fit condition to attempt an escape, the guard was removed.”

  Usually he was hidden from prying eyes by a screen around his bed but later this was removed and during visiting hours he became something of a novelty and the main topic of conversation in the ward. One day he was quite moved when a small boy came over to his bed and placed a toffee on the covers without saying a word. After two or three months he was considered fit enough to be transferred to a military hospital in Knutsford, Cheshire. Eventually, though, He
rbert Thomas was repatriated to Germany as his injuries were considered too severe for him to take any further part in the war.

  Forty-three years later the Lincolnshire Aircraft Recovery Group (LARG), located the final resting place of this rare Dornier Do17. Having obtained the necessary MOD and landowner permission LARG began their preliminary detector scan of the site, on the bank of Medlam drain at Carrington, north of Boston. At first sight little was found until it was explained by locals that the raised riverbank, into which the aircraft had crashed, had been levelled off some years previously, thus removing much of the wreckage that would have been close to the surface.

  On a warm August morning in 1984, the LARG enthusiasts arrived at the site, complete with a Hymac digger to begin the real work. At a depth of fifteen feet, the first telltale signs of the presence of a buried aircraft were found when glycol coolant and oil began to seep into the hole. Shortly after, the first identifiable components emerged. Among these items was the still intact tail wheel, complete with tyre and tube. The inner tube was taken to a local garage and reinflated and remained thus for over a year. Vast quantities of crushed metal skin from the fuselage and wings were removed, together with many smaller artefacts. At a depth of thirty-five feet below the surface of the field, part of the reduction gear of one engine was pulled from the clay. At this depth the hole was becoming very difficult to work and with the risk of flooding from and possible damage to, the adjacent drain, it was decided to cease further excavation. The final tally of items recovered included machine guns (turned over to the police), a badly torn dinghy and a survival kit which contained a corroded flare pistol and spent flare cartridges. Among the more personal items was Georg Herden’s flight briefcase, found to contain the navigation maps, signal code books, his kappi (forage cap) and a handkerchief with his initials embroidered on it.