No Place for Chivalry

by Alastair Goodrum

  So, although fighters from other sectors could be involved from time to time, now the defensive night fighter force policing not only The Wash corridor but also the rest of the East Midlands was concentrated at RAF Coleby Grange, the grass airfield a few miles south of Lincoln. We have seen from Peter McMillan’s earlier combat the other Canadian night fighter unit, 409 Squadron under Wg Cdr Paul Davoud, had two spells at Coleby Grange, separated by 410 Squadron, with Mosquito NFIIs for its home defence work, between February and October 1943. It is also worth commenting that since night fighter cover was actually pretty thinly spread over this part of the country at this point in time, it was just as well that the Luftwaffe either did not seem to have worked that out or, more likely, was simply unable to exploit it.

  During their respective spells at Coleby Grange there was little trade and both 409 and 410 Squadrons lost more aircraft in accidents than they had combats with the enemy. For example Sqn Ldr Bruce Hanbury and two airmen died when Beaufighter II, T3142, crashed at Leverton (Lincs) on March 27 1942 while Hanbury was demonstrating its stalling characteristics to a new 409 pilot. On January 13 1944, in their second spell, Beaufighter VI, MM918, suffered instrument failure during a night standing patrol and spun in at Wisbech, with the loss of its navigator Fg Off Harry Kirton. Even without the presence of the Luftwaffe, night fighter crews practiced constantly to improve their skills. Trying hard to keep on the tail of a colleague during a cine-gun exercise cost 410 Squadron and Flt Sgt William Cheropita and his RO, WO Neil Dalton, their lives when Mosquito NFII, DZ305, crashed near Sutton Bridge on August 27 1943.

  It was from Coleby Grange that the 410 Squadron crew of Fg Off D Williams and his RO, Plt Off P Dalton, took off late on March 18 1943 to patrol the south of the county.

  At about the same time, in bright moonlight, twenty-four enemy bombers were crossing the Norfolk coast at various points between Great Yarmouth and The Wash. They were a mixed force of Dornier 217s and Junkers 88s from Fliegercorps IX, including aircraft from KG2 and KG6. Their main targets were Norwich, Lowestoft and Great Yarmouth and night fighters operating from RAF Coltishall would be in action against these, too. But one or more of their number may have been seeking to disturb the sleeping outpost of the Central Gunnery School at RAF Sutton Bridge, or possibly RAF Wittering itself.

  Another favourite target in that area was the decoy Q-site at Terrington Marsh, which was very successful in protecting RAF Sutton Bridge from receiving too much attention from enemy air attacks. Much to the chagrin of the villagers of Terrington St Clements – perhaps not unreasonably given that it was only 300 yards from the outskirts – it attracted an estimated 142 HE, 750 incendiaries and one oil bomb during the course of the war.

  At 23.00 that night the air was rent by the thunderous ‘crump’ of two aerial mines and a phosphor bomb exploding near Sutton Bridge. Flashes lit up the dark landscape and a ground crew airman from CGS, LAC Douglas Broome, returning to camp after a night out, recalled how these were visible from many miles away across the flat Fens. As Fg Off Williams eased Mosquito NFII, HJ936, off Coleby’s grassy acres, the Canadian had no inkling he would become involved in an unusual combat. Digby sector control instructed him to climb to 10,000 feet, steer south and then handed him over to Flt Lt Tuttle at Orby GCI. Almost immediately he was advised of a target at three miles range. The Mosquito easily had the acceleration to close in on the enemy and Dalton picked out a tell-tale blip on the AI Mk V set at two miles range. No sooner had he begun to give his pilot an interception course when another, closer, contact was discerned on the display.

  This new target, at 1,000 yards range, slightly below and to port, was in a much better position for an attack. Williams nudged down the nose of HJ936 and the sinister shape of a Dornier Do217 floated into view, about 700 yards dead ahead.

  The crew of the Dornier Do217, an E-4 wk nr 5523, U5+AH of I/KG2 – Uffzs Horst Toifel, Ludwig Petzold, Heinrich Peter and Ofw Georg Riedel, were clearly on the alert, for in the comparatively bright conditions they were quick to spot the danger stalking them. Before Williams could get close enough to put in a burst, the Dornier was thrown into a half-roll and tried to dive away from the Mosquito. Fg Off Williams slammed open the throttles and followed the Dornier down in its plummet towards the sanctuary of darkness 8,000 feet below where, no doubt, the pilot hoped the clutter from ground returns would hide the bomber from the Mosquito’s prying radar eye.

  Fg Off Williams could not close on the fleeing Dornier and with speed building up and the controls becoming heavy, he hauled back on the stick, pulling it out of the dive at 1,800 feet. But the Dornier continued to dive and with the pilot Toifel probably unable to regain control of his machine, it plunged into the ground to be consumed with the crew in a huge ball of fire. Williams obtained a fix from Orby GCI that put him in the vicinity of King’s Lynn and was then recalled to base.

  Fg Off Williams said in his combat report that at no time did he fire his guns and neither anti-aircraft fire nor searchlights were seen in the area of the engagement. The Observer Corps found wreckage and a parachute from a Do217 that had crashed near Ongar Hill, a few miles north of King’s Lynn at the time of Williams’ engagement. RAF intelligence officers found the main wreckage on sandbanks at the mouth of the Ouse river nearby. It would seem from the description of the combat that the enemy pilot lost control of the Dornier in a dive while trying to out-manoeuvre Williams’ Mosquito. In another somewhat harsh judgement his claim for one E/A destroyed was amended to a half Do217 destroyed, shared with AA.

  This encounter marked the beginning of the end of the Luftwaffe’s offensive on the Midlands and East Anglia and there are, for example, no significant air attacks recorded against towns around The Wash during 1943. Furthermore apart from a few hit and run raids during 1944 that were mounted as part of the overall Operation Steinbock offensive, the Luftwaffe Kampfgruppen were a spent force over the region.

  It has been seen that a significant role was played by GCI stations in bringing the night bomber menace under control and Orby GCI station near Skegness was typical of these installations. One night’s action during the Steinbock period will give an idea of how what should rightly be viewed as a ‘system’ functioned when things hotted up. It will also be noted that the night fighter squadrons operating from Coleby Grange had been reorganised yet again, and after the departure of 409 in February, the Polish 307 Squadron was now in residence, flying Mosquitoes with the very latest radar equipment.

  Operation Steinbock, sometimes referred to in Britain as the ‘Baby Blitz’, was Hitler’s retaliation to heavy RAF raids on the German heartlands and was to be a concerted effort against London and other important British cities and ports. The raids, in which the Heinkel He177 aircraft – the Luftwaffe’s only viable heavy bomber – featured prominently, began on January 21 1944 and continued on and off until May of that year. The Luftwaffe took a leaf out of the RAF’s book and used pathfinder techniques and concealment behind anti-radar screens of air-dropped tin-foil strips – called ‘düppel’ by the Luftwaffe and ‘window’ by the RAF – during approaches to the British coast.

  RAF Orby was now equipped with permanent AMES Mark VII GCI apparatus, with a rotating antenna producing a 360° representation on a cathode ray screen called a plan position indicator. Orby was one of the ‘Happidrome’ stations and could handle more than one interception simultaneously. Targets were usually picked up initially by coastal Chain Home or Chain Home Low radar stations and passed to filter rooms where a raid identity was allocated. If there was no IFF radio signal from the contact the target would be classified as hostile and passed to a GCI station into whose coverage the hostile was headed. The GCI station control staff would then direct one or more night fighters – most likely already on standing patrol and held ready, orbiting a beacon – to intercept it. Reinforcements could be called up as the tactical situation required.

  After a series of eleven raids on London since the start of Steinbock, the Luftwaffe turned i
ts attention to Hull. On the evening of March 19 1944 operations at Orby Happidrome began to heat up around 20.30 hours when enemy air activity seemed imminent. Controllers on duty that night were Fg Off Shimeld and Fg Off Board, working under the general control of Sqn Ldr Clark. Assistant controllers were Sgt Barratt and Cpl Tricker and the duty shift ran 17.30 on 19th to 08.30 on 20th. Weather conditions were good, with some cloud between 2,500 and 3,500 feet. The sun had set at 19.13 while the moon was in its last quarter and was due to rise at 04.23 next morning.

  Shortly before 21.00 the Orby scanner picked up indications of a düppel screen being sown parallel to the coast about ninety miles east of Skegness and past experience had showed this was normally a prelude to a German air attack. Digby sector operations had already taken the decision to launch two Mosquito night fighters from the Polish 307 (Lwowski) Squadron at RAF Coleby Grange. Patiently orbiting beacon K at 15,000 feet altitude were ‘Duckpond 18’ a Mosquito XII, HK119, fitted with AI Mk VII, flown by Fg Off Jerzy Brochocki with Fg Off Henryk Ziolkowski as AI operator and ‘Duckpond 31’, a Mosquito XIII, HK522, flown by Fg Off Jerzy Pelka with Plt Off Gamsecki as AI operator. Once enemy activity was confirmed, Fg Off Dean at sector ops handed over control of both Mosquitoes to Orby GCI.

  Now Orby controllers directed the fighters east towards the jamming screen while two more Mosquitoes (‘Luncheons 42 and 48’) were scrambled in support. Fg Off Shimeld took control of Duckpond 31 while Fg Off Board, operating from a separate interception room, controlled Duckpond 18. Interception tracking began at 21.10 at the forward edge of the düppel screen when it was about sixty miles off Skegness. Because of the problems posed by the düppel, all the interceptions were made head-on, i.e. from the west with the targets coming from the east, so as to keep the first two Mosquitoes to the west, and clear of the jamming screen.

  The control situation was made more difficult because, in addition to the spurious düppel echoes and hostile aircraft, a variety of friendlies were also approaching the coast. Earlier this night, Mosquitoes had been sent to bomb Berlin, Düsseldorf and Aachen, while Stirlings had sown mines off the Dutch coast. Furthermore three ‘Serrate’ Mosquitoes were in action and four RCM and six OCU sorties had been flown or were in progress. It was going to be a busy night.

  As the düppel screen moved nearer the English coast, Luncheons 42 and 48, themselves supported by another fighter, Luncheon 55, were brought back inland to orbit beacons in anticipation of the penetration by hostile aircraft. Duckpond 31 was now vectored towards a number of potential targets by GCI, six of which were acquired successfully by the Mosquito’s radar operator. But there was no joy as one turned out to be friendly and the remainder were found to be düppel echoes. Simultaneously, Fg Off Board was attempting to guide Duckpond 18 to a series of interceptions. Henryk Ziolkowski actually picked out eight separate radar contacts over an area between the coast and sixty miles out. He homed in on three of these one after the other but he, too, was frustrated when Fg Off Brochocki visually identified each of them as friendlies. It is to be wondered what the crews of these RAF targets would have thought if they had known just how close they had come to the business end of a deadly night fighter.

  Fg Off Brochocki’s luck changed with the next contact. His radar operator picked up a solid return, at four miles range, from an aircraft inbound at 16,000 feet altitude about fifteen miles east of Skegness. Ziolkowski made a perfect approach to visual range and this target was unmistakeably a Heinkel He177 on a course of 290°. Brochocki wasted not a second more and opened fire, shells from his four 20mm cannon (no machine guns on this model) scoring hits on the underside of the fuselage. His second burst set the port engine on fire and the Heinkel was last seen diving vertically before the Poles lost sight of it. There was no time to waste in searching further as Board gave them yet more vectors – unfortunately all of which turned out to be either spurious or friendly contacts. All was not lost, though, because the Mosquito’s gunfire had in fact been very effective. GCI logged the interception of the Heinkel at 21.46, in grid square G3887. Observer Corps post ‘How 1’ at Skegness recorded an aircraft crashing into the sea at 21.48 in a position estimated as grid square G38 and this sighting was taken as confirmation of the destruction of the Heinkel He177. Brochocki used 240 rounds of 20mm ammunition to despatch this big bomber.

  Although the düppel screen, measuring some seventy miles long and fifty miles wide, eventually penetrated ten to twelve miles inland, there were no further interceptions coordinated by Orby GCI that night. By 22.50 hours all enemy activity in the area had ceased and the two active Mosquitoes were handed back to sector control. The Luftwaffe flew 131 sorties that night, of which about fifty are believed to have crossed the coasts of Lincolnshire and Norfolk. Most of the bombs intended for Hull seemed to fall in rural areas due, it is thought, to incorrect estimation of the wind strength, causing pathfinder flares to fall well to the south of the intended target. During the period covering the interceptions mentioned above, for example, over one hundred HE and an estimated 40,000 incendiary bombs were dropped in the Louth and Spilsby rural districts in Lincolnshire, causing little damage in the process.

  Once again post-war research enables Brochocki and Ziolkowski’s Heinkel to be identified as He177A-3, 6N+OK, of I/KG100, which failed to return having set out as part of the raid on Hull on March 19/20 1944. Its crew was Hptmn Muller, Ogefr Kuchler, Uffzs Gundner, Hockauff and Rodenstein and Ofw Utikal, all of whom were reported as missing in action.

  That night, British night fighter defences shot down nine German aircraft, including the above Heinkel, and one other raider was brought down in Lincolnshire. This was Dornier Do217 M-1, U5+RL of I/KG2 shot down at Legbourne near Louth. The kill was achieved by Fg Off R L J Barbour in a Mosquito of 264 Squadron based at Church Fenton and controlled by Patrington GCI. It also proved to be a particularly memorable night for one 25 Squadron Mosquito crew, controlled by Happisburgh CHL and Neatishead GCI. Flt Lt Joe Singleton and his RO Fg Off Geoff Haslam shot down three Ju88s from KG30 during a devastating thirteen-minute period sixty miles out over the North Sea, NNE of Cromer on the Norfolk coast. The remaining four kills are believed to have been another Dornier Do217, two more Ju88s and a Ju188.

  All in all it was a successful night for the defences since the Luftwaffe, with its diminishing numbers of bombers, could not sustain a loss rate of 7% like this for very long. To put this latter figure into some sort of context, RAF bomber loss rate, while averaging between 4% and 5% between January 1942 and August 1944, suffered peaks of 5.5% in June 1942, 6.3% in January 1944 and 6.5% in June 1944 before falling away to between 1% and 2% thereafter. Indeed the Steinbock raids petered out during May as the Luftwaffe cut its losses and saved its energy and resources for the expected invasion of France.

  If the Luftwaffe’s bombers were being contained, the same could not be said about the Fernnachtjäger – the intruders. It is well known that the Luftwaffe night fighter force was playing havoc with RAF Bomber Command operations over continental Europe and its thoughts turned once more to that other of its effective but underplayed tactics – the intruder.

  Airfields in eastern England were, once again, about to feel the effect of this dangerous foe and the Fenland region would be littered with the evidence of success, even though it would be shortlived. After a gap of two years, RAF losses to intruders over England began to mount again. Luftwaffe success increased from August 1943 when even the Mosquito was vulnerable to attack in its take-off and landing phases, as Fg Off W Foster of 410 Squadron was to find out in the early hours of September 1. Fg Off Foster and Plt Off J Grantham were scrambled from Coleby Grange at 03.07 hours and while taking off had the fright of their lives as streams of red and silver flashes took them by surprise. Just east of Navenby, at 400 feet with only 150mph on the clock and navigation lights lit, the Mosquito was suddenly enveloped by a long burst – they thought it must have been almost twenty seconds – of firing. Foster doused the navigation lights but at that
speed could take no evasive action. Either the enemy aircraft overshot or ran out of ammunition but the Mosquito, hit in the wings, rear fuselage and tailplane and with a shell through the main fuel tank, managed to keep flying. The elevators were damaged so Foster climbed gently to 10,000 feet, tested controls and hydraulics and with great relief all round was able to land back at Coleby Grange without further mishap. Later the same month a 57 Squadron Lancaster was shot down near Spilsby and another from 101 Squadron near Wickenby.

  It was during the period April to June 1944 that Me410s of V/KG2 and II/KG51 really made their presence felt. Forty RAF and USAAF aircraft were shot down, with April bringing the highest loss of twenty-nine Allied aircraft. Patrolling in the vicinity of airfields was always likely to be the most effective method but not all victims fell within airfield boundaries, as the following incidents will show.

  Tasked to attack a range of French communications targets in the run up to D-Day, on the night of April 18/19, RAF Bomber Command sent 273 Lancasters, including twenty-six aircraft from 115 Squadron, to bomb railway marshalling yards at Rouen. None were lost over the target but Me410s cruising East Anglian skies lay in wait for the returning force.

  Lancaster LL667, KO-R, was caught as twenty-year-old Plt Off John Birnie arrived in the vicinity of RAF Witchford. His aircraft was shot down at Coveney Fen north of Ely with the loss of all seven crew members. Shortly afterwards New Zealander Flt Lt Charlie Eddy MBE, circling the same area in LL867, A4-J, was shot down almost certainly by the same intruder. This Lancaster crashed north of Witchford, also with the loss of all seven airmen on board. Meanwhile, a little further west, having successfully attacked railway targets at Juvisy, Plt Off A E O’Beary and his Australian crew were heading home to RAF East Kirkby in Lancaster ND475. This 57 Squadron crew was shot down by an intruder two miles south-east of Whittlesey, killing all eight airmen on board.