In fact, plans were already being made for an attack on the German capital using the one and only French aircraft that was capable of getting there.
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INTERLUDE: THE FLIGHT OFTHE JULES VERNE, 7 JUNE 1940
Amid all the chaos and misery of almost continual retreat, there shone deeds of courage and dedication that were to be an inspiration to those who followed in later years, as individual Frenchmen fought their own battle against the floodtide that burst across their land. One such was Commandant Daillière, the central figure of one of the most astonishing air dramas of the war.
In October 1939, a month after the outbreak of hostilities, several French naval officers were summoned urgently to Paris to be briefed for a special mission. They had only been in uniform for a few weeks, having been called up with France’s reserve forces when war with Germany seemed inevitable. All had one thing in common: in peacetime, they had formed the crews of the giant Farman and Latecoere transport aircraft which plied the intercontinental air routes between France and her colonies.
In Paris, the officers learned that the French Admiralty had requisitioned a pair of Farman transports belonging to Air France, and that they were to fly these machines on long-range maritime patrol duties over the South Atlantic. Their primary mission was to locate and track the German warships Admiral Graf Spec and Admiral Scheer, which were threatening the Allied trade routes. For this purpose, the aircraft were to be based in Brazil.
The two machines took off from Bordeaux on 8 October 1939 and headed south. After a non-stop flight of sixteen hours they reached Dakar in West Africa, where they refuelled in readiness for the next leg: the crossing of the Atlantic. Arriving in Brazil late on the eleventh, after fourteen and a half hours over the ocean, they began their operational task almost at once, ranging far out over the sea on search of the elusive warships. Since Brazil was neutral, the aircraft — which were still in Air France colours — carried out their reconnaissance flights under the guise of weather research. Their efforts, however, were in vain, and they were recalled to France in November. One of them skidded off the runway at Dakar and was completely wrecked, although the crew escaped unhurt.
Meanwhile, the French Admiralty had requisitioned three more Air France transports: new Farmans, all factory fresh and named after celebrated French science writers of the nineteenth century Jules Verne, Camille Flammarion and Leverrier. They were fitted with machine-guns, and in theory at least they could carry three tons of bombs over a range of 3,000 miles. The three aircraft were placed under the command of Commandant Daillière, an experienced long-range pilot who had led the transatlantic detachment, and various schemes were put forward for their use during the winter of 1939-40. One such was to employ them in laying magnetic mines in the Gulf of Bothnia, between Finland and Sweden, through which a high proportion of Germany’s vital iron ore traffic passed. In the event this scheme came to nothing, although the Jules Verne was modified to carry bombs or mines on racks under the wings, the interior of the fuselage being almost entirely taken up by fuel tanks, with only a narrow catwalk from nose to tail. Neither of the other machines was modified in this way, and Jules Verne consequently became the only Farman to carry out offensive operations.
Early in 1940, Daillière strongly advocated using the Jules Verne to bomb targets in Germany, Berlin being at the top of his list. The French Admiralty, however, refused to agree to such a plan, not only because the bombing of enemy territory was not yet Allied policy, but because Daillière, with his vast experience, was considered too valuable a person to risk his life on a mission of this kind.
Nevertheless, Daillière and his crew carried out many practice bombing missions in the spring of 1940, and on 11 May, the day after the start of the German offensive in the west, they were briefed to carry out their first offensive sortie. At dusk, the Jules Verne took off from its base at Lanveoc-Poulmic, on the Cherbourg peninsula, and flew to Aachen, where it dropped a few bombs in the vicinity of the railway station. On the way home it bombed the bridges at Maastricht, over which the German armoured divisions were pouring into the Low Countries. The damage caused in both attacks was negligible. The next mission, on the night of 14 May, was against road junctions on the island of Walcheren, where units of the French Seventh Army — which had advanced deep into Holland — were cut off and isolated.
The third and fourth missions, on 16 and 20 May, were once again flown against rail targets in Aachen. The second of these sorties was particularly exacting for the crew, for the night was brilliantly clear and the German defences were fully alerted. The Jules Verne was flying at only 1,200 feet, following the main railway line that led towards its objective, Aachen station, when suddenly the aircraft was caught in a web of searchlights. The big machine was still uncamouflaged and her silver paintwork glittered in the intense light, making her a sitting target.
Although Daillière was aircraft captain, the Jules Verne was flown on this occasion by Master Pilot Queugnet, who now took her down to rooftop level and began a series of violent evasive manoeuvres. Daillière, half-blinded by the searchlights, ordered the pilot to make two runs over the station before releasing his bombs. Although the flak was intense, the big aircraft miraculously collected only two splinter holes before making its escape. There was, however, one casualty as a result of this attack: Master Pilot Queugnet, who was so exhausted by the strain of throwing the huge, ponderous machine around the sky at low level that he had to be replaced by Master Pilot Yonnet, who piloted the Jules Verne on all her subsequent missions.
During the closing days of May the Jules Verne undertook several tactical operations, notably against German armoured columns in the Clair Marais Forest and an important railway junction near St Omer. Daillière, meanwhile, had been continuing to seek approval for a raid on Berlin, but at the end of May — even with the French armies collapsing on all sides — the government was still reluctant to approve such a step for fear of reprisals. It was only on 4 June, following the large-scale attack on targets in the Paris area, that the French authorities relented and Daillière was ordered to put his plans into action.
The French Admiralty, which had been the sole authority governing the Jules Verne’s operations so far, already possessed a considerable dossier of target photographs and maps of the Berlin area, which Daillière and his crew had memorised thoroughly. By this time the Jules Verne and her two sister Farmans had been formed into an official French Navy unit, Escadrille B5, which was based at Bordeaux-Merignac on the coast, and to achieve maximum surprise Daillière decided to route the flight to Berlin over water for as long as possible, the aircraft flying over the English Channel and the North Sea before turning eastwards across the ‘neck’ of Denmark, north of Kiel, and approaching the German capital from the north. The attack was to be made at a height of not less than 4,500 feet because of the danger from barrage balloons, and under no circumstances were bombs to be dropped on densely-populated areas.
The Jules Verne took off from Merignac on the long outward journey at three o’clock in the afternoon of 7 June, the flight timed so that the aircraft would arrive over Denmark just as darkness was falling. As it lumbered along the Channel coast at 160 miles per hour, labouring under the weight of fuel and bombs it carried, it was fired on several times by French and British warships, who at this stage in the Battle of France understandably considered every aircraft they sighted to be hostile. Fortunately, on this occasion at least, their shooting was poor.
Lieutenant Paul Comet, the Jules Verne’s navigator, had no difficulty in following his course. The weather was absolutely clear, and excellent visibility enabled him to pick out the island of Sylt from a considerable distance — an important point, for there were heavy anti-aircraft defences on the island and Comet had been worried in case they strayed over them. But Sylt slid by harmlessly on the right, and the aircraft flew peacefully on.
The wind forecast had been very precise, allowing Comet to work out an exact ground speed, and aft
er crossing Denmark without incident the Jules Verne made landfall on the Baltic coast north of Berlin right on schedule. It was only now that the navigator began to experience some difficulty, because heavy cloud had crept over northern Germany, extending down to about 1,000 feet, and it proved impossible to locate some of the planned landmarks. From time to time, Comet saw a lake through a rift in the cloud, but he was unable to make any positive identification. Then, by sheer good luck, he saw a glow in the sky far ahead: it was caused by Berlin’s searchlights. The aircraft’s approach must have been detected, and the capital’s air-raid defences were now on the alert.
Master Pilot Yonnet steered directly towards the probing searchlight beams. As soon as he reached the suburbs, he flew a series of pre-planned courses over the city, designed to make the Germans think that more than one aircraft was involved. The Jules Verne’s undersides had now been painted matt black and the Germans seemed completely unable to locate the aircraft, despite the dozens of searchlight beams that swept to and fro across the night sky. As yet, not a single anti-aircraft gun had opened up.
Up in the nose of the aircraft, Daillière and Yonnet were finding it increasingly difficult to see. Apart from the glare of the searchlights, more cloud was beginning to drift over Berlin and in just a few more minutes they would be forced to bomb blindly, with the danger of hitting heavily-populated areas. Daillière therefore ordered the pilot to make for the capital’s western suburbs without further delay; intelligence photographs had indicated a cluster of factories in this sector of the city, and these seemed to present the most worthwhile target.
Five minutes later, when he judged that they were directly above the objective the Farman was fitted with only a rudimentary bomb sight — Daillière released the two-ton bomb load and ordered Yonnet to set course directly for France. The pilot put down the Farman’s nose to gain speed and opened the throttles, anxious to get clear of the city’s fringes before the flak started to come up. A few moments later, the clouds reflected the orange flashes of the bomb bursts, and then the sky lit up with strings of shellbursts, twinkling above the city. None of the enemy fire came near the Farman.
The homeward flight was made without incident, Yonnet taking the Jules Verne in a straight line across western Germany and the Rhine. The aircraft landed at Orly, near Paris, just as dawn was breaking, its fuel reserves practically exhausted.
The Jules Verne’s route to Berlin had taken it over Rostock, the home of the Heinkel aircraft factories, and the crew reported that these had been brilliantly lit. The result was that, on the night of 10 June, the Farman once again set out for Germany, with Rostock as the target. The objective was reached after a trouble-free flight, although the crew spent several uncomfortable minutes flying around in heavy flak before Daillière made a satisfactory bombing run. Several fires were reported in the factory area.
Shortly afterwards, the Jules Verne was sent to Istres in southern France to take part in operations against the Italians, who had declared war on 10 June. The first mission from this new base, carried out on 14 June, was against oil storage tanks at Porto Marghera, the port of Venice; eight bombs were dropped and one tank was definitely set on fire. A second mission, against Livorno two nights later, was less successful.
The Jules Verne’s last sortie was flown on 18 June, when Daillière and his crew paid a visit to Rome — to drop not bombs but leaflets.
Sadly, the big Farman met an inglorious end. Trapped at Marignane through lack of fuel, it was burned to prevent it from falling into enemy hands. Commandant Daillière, who became a member of the Vichy French forces, was eventually transferred to Dakar in West Africa.
One day in 1942, a Martin Maryland bomber bearing Vichy French markings strayed into British airspace at Freetown, Sierra Leone: It was intercepted by RAF Hawker Hurricane fighters, and its pilot ignored their signals to land. The RAF fighters opened fire and shot it down. The body of the pilot was found in the wreckage, a bullet through his head.
Such was the tragic death of Commandant Daillière, the man who, with a small band of gallant comrades, carried the war for the first time to Germany’s capital in a small, almost personal gesture of defiance that shone like a beacon through the shame of France’s collapse.
Chapter Ten
The pilots assembled in the open air in the freshness of a June dawn, straight from their beds, stretching and yawning, rubbing their hands across stubbled faces. Armstrong saw that Villeneuve had called them all together, Frenchmen and Poles, and knew that something big was in the wind. He was not mistaken, and Villeneuve wasted no time on preliminaries as he stood before them, feet slightly apart, his hands clasped behind his back. Armstrong had noticed that the colonel had taken to adopting this particular stance recently, with his hands hidden from view, and knew why; Villeneuve’s hands trembled constantly now, for the twin strains of command and combat had taken their toll. Willpower alone was keeping the man going.
“Gentlemen,” he said in a high and clear voice that reached them all, “the Boches are on the move again. A few hours ago, they began a massive artillery barrage on the Somme front, stretching from the Channel coast to Laon. First reports indicate that General Besson’s Third Army Group is under extreme pressure. The enemy has established a bridgehead on the Somme at St Valery, on the left of the Allied line, and the British 51st Division in that sector is under heavy attack. On the right, other units of the 51st Division, together with our own 31st Alpine Division, are withdrawing to the line of the Bresle river between Eu and Blaugy.”
The pilots had brought their maps with them and were hurriedly making pencil marks on them, tracing the rapidly shifting battle front as Villeneuve outlined the situation.
“Although compelled to withdraw in the face of superior forces,” Villeneuve continued, “the Allies are contesting every metre of ground and are inflicting substantial casualties on the enemy. However, the Germans have captured two intact railway bridges on the Somme, between Conde and Hangest, and their troops are crossing over in great strength. The situation is very confused and I have no information other than that which I have just given you.”
Had he known the true picture, Villeneuve would have been horrified. Pouring across the bridges that had been taken by General Hoth’s XV Panzer Corps, the German infantry had pushed straight on to attack and overwhelm two Senegalese regiments of the 5th Colonial Division, creating a dangerous gap through which the tanks drove on towards Le Quesnoy. Pausing only to shoot up a few isolated pockets of resistance, the German armour thundered on through Le Quesnoy into the Laudon valley, where they were engaged by a battery of 75-mm guns of the French 72nd Artillery Regiment. Several German tanks were knocked out, but the remainder encircled the artillery battery and destroyed it.
By dawn, the German tanks had advanced so far that they had crossed the Luftwaffe’s bomb line, with the consequent danger that they might be attacked in error by their own dive-bombers. Their commander therefore halted them and consolidated his position, waiting for the rest of the offensive to catch up.
The German armour belonged to the 7th Panzer Division, and its commander was General Erwin Rommel. Rommel again, that thorn in the Allies’ flesh!
By his daring thrust across country, Rommel had made nonsense of the whole defensive policy of the line that had been set up on the Somme, the so-called Weygand Line. This relied not on a continuous front but on a network of ‘hedgehogs’ dotted over the countryside, each hedgehog being a fortified natural obstacle such as a village, wood or farmhouse, with the defending troops well dug in and supported by mortars, heavy machine-guns and 75-mm artillery pieces, the latter with the task of engaging the enemy tanks over open sights. Wherever possible, each hedgehog was situated in a position that enabled it to provide covering fire for its neighbours, and each was provided with sufficient stores and ammunition to carry on fighting for a time even after it had been surrounded.
Although the Weygand Line had been designed to give some semblance of a defen
ce in depth, it was by no means proof against a strong armoured thrust of the type in which Rommel excelled. It might have been a different story if the line had been backed up by strong forces of French armour and heavy air support, but it had neither. But Weygand had ordered his troops to stand and fight to the death, and in many cases they did precisely that. This time there was no disorganised rabble, streaming away from the front; this time the French were fighting with a valour born of desperation, conscious that they were the last shield between the armoured lance and their country’s heart. Time and again, the French gunners refused to abandon their positions, hurling shell after shell at the Panzers until the steel tracks ground over them or the Stukas’ bombs pounded them into the dust. At Amiens and Peronne, they halted the advance of General von Kleist’s tanks after only a few miles; only in Rommel’s sector was any significant advance made.
But that was enough. Allied reinforcements were on the way in the shape of the Scottish 52nd Lowland Division, which was already beginning to arrive in Normandy, and the 1st Canadian Division was preparing to embark for France from England. It was already clear, thanks to Rommel’s daring, that they would be too late.
Larks sang in the early rays of the sun over Le Bourget as Villeneuve addressed his pilots, just as they had sung over the Somme battlefield on a June day a quarter of a century earlier. Their melody formed a background to Villeneuve’s voice as he continued his briefing.
“Our orders are to put our maximum effort into bomber escort,” he told them. “Later, we shall be providing air cover for our Seventh and Tenth Armies and, if necessary, we shall be available for ground attack work.”
The latter remark brought audible groans from some of the pilots, who knew the kind of havoc that could be wrought by the German light flak. For fighter pilots, ground strafing was the worst possible job. Villeneuve smiled thinly and held up a hand for silence.
Flames over France Page 13