101 Nights

by Ray Ollis

  Loosely inserted in Ray’s logbook is a typewritten account describing Ray’s training and operational experiences. Titled, ‘Copy. Extract, Flying log-book, R.B. Ollis’, it runs concurrently with his logbook from April 1944.

  The ‘Extract’ allowed Ray to make comments he couldn’t in the logbook. In April, he was transferred to No. 21 Operational Training Unit, navigating Wellington 10s from Enstone around the countryside.

  It is here that Ray found his first crew; Warrant Officer Walter Hrynkiw (J86647, RCAF), Wireless Operator P/O B.J. Keynes, Bomb Aimer Sgt Gordon Smart, Mid-Upper Gunner Sgt Jack Squire, and Rear Gunner Sgt Joe Lightfoot. It is probable that Ray bases at least one of his most significant characters on Hrynkiw.

  Pilot Walter Hrynkiw had already survived ten ops on Halifaxes with the famous 78 Squadron. 78 flew the most operations of 4 Group, with the highest losses ‘and highest percentage losses in any Halifax squadron’ and the greatest losses in 4 Group (Middlebrook and Everitt).6

  Hrynkiw’s ops with 78 Squadron were eventful; as Ray arrived in Scotland, an old battered Halifax (JD118, EY-E) took off just before sunset. Over the target Hrynkiw’s aircraft was badly hit by flak, killing Sgt Valley, his navigator, and seriously wounding Sgt G. Creer. Hrynkiw was able to return, but lost control, crashing in Yorkshire.

  Hrynkiw’s last op with 78 Squadron was on 21 February 1944. Hrynkiw’s boys found and bombed Stuttgart just after 4 am. Again badly hit by flak, Hrynkiw’s navigator was killed and two others seriously wounded. Hrynkiw struggled home; running low on petrol they were diverted to RAF Dunsfold in Surrey. As they landed, the undercarriage collapsed, causing the Halifax to swing a full 90 degrees; Hyrnkiw attempted to take off again, but crashed into trees.

  Hrynkiw was then transferred to No. 21 OTU where, two months later, he found a new crew. It says much of Hrynkiw’s personality that the ‘sprogs’ thought him a confident and determined man, particularly after he explained that he could only do twenty ops to the crew’s thirty; the crew would then have to make up their remaining ten ops with other pilots.

  By May, the crew were working hard to get into the fight before the invasion started, flying night cross-countries, bombing practice and ‘fighter affiliation’ (where a fighter practices attacking the bomber, and the bomber practices evasion and gunnery).

  It was an exciting time to be in England; for several years the city streets were filled with uniforms, then, suddenly, in early June, most of them vanished as the invasion armadas assembled. Ray was on leave as the Allies’ invasion of Europe began, and when flying bombs first fell on England, particularly London. Hitler’s spiteful mini-blitz was as needless as it was cruel; however, by the apparently careless targeting standard set by the Allies’ bombing, to the Germans the mini-blitz would have seemed appropriate (if insufficient) revenge.

  Morale bombing is a double-edged sword. During the Battle of Britain, the Luftwaffe were frequently told the RAF had no more aircraft, yet the Hurricanes and Spitfires kept appearing; Luftwaffe morale drooped. Three years later during the Battle of Berlin, the Germans knew that if they maintained a high enough rate of attrition among the British and American bombers, the aircrew would begin to rebel. It took time for the German Vengeance weapons to be contained; while their impact certainly affected public morale, the V weapons never threatened the invasion.

  By early July Hrynkiw and his crew were at 1662 Heavy Conversion Unit at Blyton, one of hundreds of temporary airfields built for the duration of the war. Blyton operated the Halifax; Flight Engineer Sgt Roger Grantham-Hill joined them for the next three weeks’ training.

  One of Ray’s logbook entries stands out: ‘July 17, Duty: Passenger. Remarks: Dental-Check.’

  Unless it were common practice for all crew to undergo an ‘altitude toothache check’ before entering operations, it seems that Ray went up (as a passenger) with P/O Lyons, presumably with a medical officer, to ascertain whether his condition was real or psychosomatic.

  Deighton remarks that

  granted courage by ignorance and the inhibitory effect that curiosity has upon fear, [a crew’s] morale was high for the first five operations, after which … a crack-up point was reached by the eleventh or twelfth trip … [which] was marked by more subtle defensive changes in the crew: a fatalism, a brutalising, a callousness about the deaths of friends and a marked change in demeanour … this was the time in which the case-histories of ulcers, deafness, and other stress-induced nervous diseases that were to follow the survivors through their later years, actually began …

  Such ‘defensive changes’ need not, of course, confine themselves precisely to ‘the eleventh or twelfth trip’; they could easily occur earlier.

  The day after Ray’s dental-check, Hrynkiw’s crew provide ‘Diversion for Ruhr. Zuider-Zee, 60 E’.

  The heartland of German military manufacturing, the Ruhr (nicknamed ‘Happy Valley’) was much-visited and much-feared by Bomber Command airmen. The ‘diversion’ sent some 115 aircraft out over the North Sea in order to either fool or divide the attention of the enemy fighters from the two major raids on oil installations; Middlebrook and Everitt leave an impression of skies crowded with radio traffic and noisy radio jamming, feints, double-bluffs, spoofs, bombs, mines, anti-aircraft rockets, V1s and flak.

  On 19 July the crew performed a seven-hour ‘Bulls-Eye’ in this case ‘stooging around the enemy coast generally making a nuisance of themselves’ (Feast)—baiting the enemy searchlights along the Dutch and French coast to confuse the German night-fighter defences.

  Again, almost an op. But only if they’d dropped bombs.

  As the pilot’s controls and crew positions in a Lancaster were in different places to the Halifax, Hrynkiw and his crew then did day and night exercises at Number 1 Lancaster Finishing School, a busy training station, then taking two weeks’ leave before reporting for duty at Number 101 Squadron, Ludford Magna.

  Mens Agitat Molem

  101 Squadron’s history included bombing the German Army in France and Belgium in 1917; the squadron motto, mens agitat molem (‘mind over matter’) was coined during WW1.

  Ground Cigar used fifteen land-based VHF transmitters to jam the German night-fighter controller’s channels. Because the jamming could not be pushed far enough east, a similar jamming system that could be carried in aircraft was developed; in October 1943, 101 Squadron was selected to carry the new Airborne Cigar (ABC).

  ABC equipment weighed over 600 pounds, including receivers, power units, transmitters, generators, aerials and so on. The receiver swept for signals 25 times per second. Headphones enabled the operator to hear the German transmissions, but a cathode ray tube was also used, depicting the German bandwidth as a horizontal line, and German transmissions as a vertical line. The Special Operator could aim his own transmitter at the vertical line, and tune in. If he heard a German transmission, he would tune his control to the German’s frequency, transmitting a loud warbling sound, obliterating the vertical line. ABC’s three transmitters could jam three German signals at once; the Special could return to check if the German was still there, or had shifted frequency. Alexander reports that the first German transmission ABC heard was ‘Achtung English bastards coming!’

  The savage battle of attrition from November 1943 to March 1944 (known as the Battle of Berlin), the bitter losses of the Nuremburg raid, the savage Mailly-le-Camp raid in May might have been only half a year past, but on a bomber squadron three weeks ago was an eternity.

  The lead-up to D-Day, the softening of the German defences and the dislocation of the transport and communication networks were also gone. Now all that remained was for the Germans to fold their cards, get up and go home. But Germany did not surrender.

  While not blind to the mistakes of Britain and Australia, Ray regarded the Germans in the same way all Allied bomber crew did. The Germans deserved the bombing because they started it and, if they were not stopped, they would continue to devastate and enslave Europe, the Mediterranean, Russia, the
Middle East, Africa, America …

  Searby’s comment is accurate:

  Whatever one’s reaction to the bombing of cities … it was [the enemy’s] own choice—that the shooting war should be conducted against the civilian population—when, after failing to defeat our fighter squadrons in 1940, he drenched London in a sea of fire and slaughter; thereby planting the seeds of [his] final defeat.

  In late August 1944, Hyrinkiw’s crew arrived at Number 14 Base, Ludford Magna, where 101 Squadron had between 44 and 50 Lancs on station at any one time (the equivalent of two squadrons). Ludford Magna was very small, but nearby village pubs the White Hart and the Black Horse catered to local farmers and their labourers.

  A Bomber Command squadron was (and is) an enclosed world. Aircrew maintained a rough, dark, sardonic sense of humour regarding their work and the increasing likelihood of their painful deaths.

  Hrynkiw’s crew were given a week to familiarise themselves with squadron life and their aircraft; a period which also allowed their superiors to assess whether they were properly trained and suitable for ops.

  A few more exercises later and Hrynkiw’s crew were ready. All raids were eventful. But some raids were more eventful than others … what we would consider the battle of a lifetime today, many logbooks do not bother to record an impression.

  Four early ops were on Le Havre; their Gee set ‘packed up’ and their ‘starboard outer oil-line [was] holed by flak’ on their first op, but their second was ‘Quiet’ as were their next two raids.

  Hours after the last raid, on 11 September, the Germans surrendered after a British ground attack which cost 50 British soldiers their lives in exchange for 11,000 German prisoners. Only two Bomber Command aircraft had been lost.

  Hrynkiw’s crew had done five ops in a week. The sprogs may have thought that in six weeks they’d be home for Christmas.

  The crew’s next op, Stuttgart, was a harsh baptism. Ray did not fly with the crew, his place taken by a man called Castle. One of just over 200 Lancasters, on 12 September Rays’ crew took off into the dusk at ten to five and left Stuttgart in a firestorm a little after half past eight.

  On returning the crew found themselves over Karlsruhe; flak killed Irish bomb aimer Gordon Smart (the aircraft was holed 17 times). Despite this, Hrynkiw pressed on and bombed the target. This would have been hard on Hrynkiw; his last op to Stuttgart had been a ‘dicey do’ resulting in two crew hospitalised and one dead.

  Ray does not explain his absence on this op. When asked if Ray had suffered from a minor feature of 101 Nights, ‘altitude toothache’, Margaret Ollis replied that ‘a lot of the fellows had this problem’, and that ‘Ray had had a couple of teeth removed’.

  If Ray did suffer from altitude toothache, it is not hard to imagine that Ray would have felt uneasy (if not guilty) at Smart’s death; perhaps if Ray were navigating instead of Castle this would not have happened. But we cannot know; the simplest of errors of navigation could have the worst consequences.

  Other ops were laid on, but many were cancelled. Also, there were more ops for 101 than for most squadrons because 101’s ABC services were essential. On the few days that ops were not on, nearby farmhouses offered food different to the mess, and a homey, human atmosphere. There were pubs, but not every man headed there. Some crews stuck together, some split up. There were books to read, letters to write, games to play to pass the time—and griefs. But above all it was waiting, waiting for the next op.

  Ray’s sixth op, followed by an abort, was to Calais. For his eighth op Ray navigated for F/L Haycraft, taking off into the darkening dusk for the Siegfried Line where the roads and railways around Saarbrücken were bombed in support of the Third Army. Ray found the target marking by the Pathfinder Force ‘poor’, commenting, ‘PFF Pull Your Finger Out’, most of the bombs were on target. He also added, rather laconically, ‘combat’.

  Now we notice something significant. Many Bomber Command memoirs include a moment where the navigator ‘appear[ed] from behind his curtain and was momentarily terrified by what he saw which was surely the work of Lucifer. “Bloody hell!” he said, and disappeared back to the relative safety of his navigator’s position. He was happier not to know what was going on outside’ (Feast).

  It seems that, unlike most Bomber Command navigators, Ray was emerging from behind his screen and work-table to look at the target. His irritated comment is on an operational aspect which other navigators would not have added because they did not see it.

  Ray’s next raid elicits, ‘Reich by day!’, adding a newspaper clipping to his logbook: ‘Bombers were flying through absolutely ten tenths flak. I saw several hit and going down in flames, but I saw no fighters attack them’. One wonders if this is what Ray saw. The public, radio and newspapers were thirsty for heroes; if you survived, the war might provide a quick route to fame and fortune.

  From here, Ray’s logbook resembles a film-fan’s scrapbook. When, in 101 Nights, Ray makes a derogatory remark about a logbook resembling a scrapbook, at the time it was mostly young women who kept film-star scrap-books; autograph books were a more acceptable pursuit for boys, but not men.

  Their new bomb-aimer, F/S R.S. Symonds (RAAF) joins for bombing practice. On 14 October Hrynkiw’s crew embark on the first of three operations in thirty-six hours, intended to demonstrate the speed and power with which Bomber Command could now operate; Operation Hurricane.

  Duisburg twice, Wilhelmshaven once. Finding clear skies over Duisburg over 950 heavy bombers left a large part of the Ruhr in flames, and were back inside five hours. Bomber Command lost fourteen aircraft.

  In 101 Nights, Ray writes, ‘The men could see their vicious handiwork and such is the hate that war creates, the men delighted in it.’ We wonder if this refers to his crew or himself.

  A few minutes before midnight, nearly a thousand aircraft flew to the same target, returning to Ludford a little over five hours later for the loss of seven aircraft.

  Ray’s clippings tell part of the story; ‘Early yesterday morning Duisburg was on fire from end to end … some of the thousands who manned the bombers on the first raid by daylight … also made the double trip. They rose before 4 am and after their return, before lunch-time, only had time for a wash, a meal, a quick nap, before preparing for the night raid from which they returned early yesterday morning—almost 24 hours after the first take-off.’

  The crews were woken to prepare for a 5.30 pm take-off for Wilhelmshaven.

  Not getting much sleep before going off on another raid is not like going to see a show, coming home for a nap and heading off to work. The toll of ops was cumulative; the enormous nervous tension, the constant attention to small detail, always aware that the next moment could be your last, is a pressure that wearies the spirit in such a way that the damage is done before the individual is aware there might be a problem. As Deighton points out, around the eleventh op is about when changes in behaviour typically began to occur; ‘Noisy men became quiet and reflective while the shy ones often became clamourous.’

  Ray tells us; ‘sea leg both ways and lost Gee! Our third op in 40 hours with only 8 hours sleep. Astro leading-line to target bang on’, but despite the apparently good marking and the bomber stream coming down below the clouds Wilhelmshaven was not destroyed, (though its historic Rathaus was).

  A few nights later Hrynkiw heads for Stuttgart. Ray’s Extract is blunt, ‘First time skipper on Stuttgart returned without a dead crewman’. Deighton observes:

  perhaps it was the relief of surviving the thirteenth operation that made [morale] climb after it. Men had seen death at close quarters and were shocked to discover their own fear of it. But recognising the same shameful fears in the eyes of their friends helped their morale, and after a slight recovery it remained constant until about the twenty-second trip …

  Their next trip, on the 23rd to Essen saw their Air Speed Indicator, Air Position Indicator, Bomb-Sight and ‘Z’ (code for the Special Duties Operator’s ABC equipment) all fail 25 minutes bef
ore reaching the target; without them they could not find the target; even if they did, they would be bombing by guesstimate. Realising the futility and the unnecessary danger of continuing, Hrynkiw turned around, jettisoning his bombs in the Channel. Because they did not bomb the target, there was ‘no op’ to count towards their tour.

  Two days later they returned to Essen, returning ‘holed by flak’.

  On the 28th, they flew on a daylight raid to Cologne: ‘Direct hit on Krupps … Layer cloud at 8,000 feet shattered by blast of explosion below’. It is fair to assume that Ray witnessed this.

  Two nights later they again visited Cologne. Again, their ASI and API both failed. But most unusually, their robust Distant Reading Compass also failed. Icing was clearly a factor here, but Feast relates an incident involving ‘magnetic links in the chain to the control column’ rendering the DRC unserviceable. Perhaps Hrynkiw’s crew wondered aloud about sabotage.

  However, the crew ‘pressed on to atone C.O. bawl-out re Essen abort (23/10/44) … 2 combats’. The loss of these instruments, particularly the DRC, could have resulted in the crew being killed; however the Bomber Command attitude was that if it was at all possible to ‘press on’ and bomb the enemy, the crew should continue.

  On this raid ‘enormous damage was caused in Braunsfeld, Lindenthal, Klettenberg and Sulz, which were “regelrecht umgepflugt”—“thoroughly ploughed up” …’ (Middlebrook and Everitt).

  Halloween sees Hrynkiw’s boys return to Cologne. As an ammunition train blew up, Ray’s logbook remarks ‘Wizard Prang’ and ‘Fuck Their Horrible Luck!’; it seems likely Ray saw the huge explosion.

  Ray Ollis completed his eighteenth op over Düsseldorf on 2 November, and on the 4th found Bochum. No doubt mindful of the C.O.’s bawling-out, the Extract reveals, ‘Lost starboard inner on take-off. Started immediate climb and set course 7 mins early. Bombed on 3 [engines], 6 minutes late and 2000ft low. Very hot trip.’

  Extra strain on the remaining three engines immediately after take-off meant that SR-C would struggle to lift off, and would continue to struggle to maintain height and speed. That they bombed 2000 feet below the bomber stream meant they avoided the icing at higher altitude; they were lucky not to have been hit by bombs falling from above, or been damaged by the upward blasts of exploding cookies.7 Ray was luckier than he knew; of 749 aircraft despatched 28 were lost.