by Peter Rees
Harris now had 1047 bombers ready to take off from fifty-three bases across Britain. Sam Weller flew one of the 131 Halifax bombers from 4 Group that were taking part. The pre-flight briefing was tense but thrilling: ‘You can imagine the reaction, because we had usually operated with about 200 [aircraft] at most. An enormous roar went up.’
The bombers took off at 2230 hours. Once they reached Western Europe, crews were told to pick out the Rhine river and follow it to Cologne. The first bombers to arrive were the Stirlings and Wellingtons from 1 and 3 Groups equipped with Gee navigational systems. Their target was the Neumarkt, in the city’s old town. The idea was to set it alight with incendiary bombs so it would act as a beacon for the bombers that followed. These planes would bomb areas 1.5 kilometres to the north or south of the Neumarkt. They flew above cloud from the Netherlands to the German border where, as the meteorological office had predicted, the cloud disappeared. When the first planes reached Cologne, the moon gave the crews near perfect visibility. Fifteen minutes after the first bombs dropped, the old town was ablaze.
Arthur Doubleday took off with 460 Squadron, recalling that the nearest cloud cover he could see was ‘almost as far away as Colombo’.
As we went over the North Sea there was the biggest harvest moon. Yellow and big and bright and you could see the aircraft half a mile away. It was a magnificent evening. We weren’t in the first so-called waves that went over but we saw the target from a fair way back. This was the first time I hadn’t been picked up by searchlights and ack-ack. The whole searchlight belt had been shifted and placed around the city. We were delighted with this change because we didn’t have flak until we got into the target, whereas on previous sorties we had it for fifteen minutes going in. They couldn’t man the whole belt. It was bad for fifteen minutes but we weren’t holed on that raid.
Peter Isaacson was piloting a Wellington, and later wrote to his parents about the operation.
I didn’t feel a bit nervous—probably because I had so much to do, but I must confess I was sweating quite a bit taking off, because this was the first time I had taken off with a really heavy load. Everything was quiet going there. You could see the fires after about 10 minutes of leaving the Dutch coast. When we got there—about three quarters of the way through the raid—the place was blazing furiously . . . Gosh, what a mess we made of the place.
Just as the young pilot officer let go of his bombs from 12,000 feet, his Wellington was caught in a cone of searchlights. He immediately twisted and turned and managed to break free of the lights, losing 2000 feet as he did so. He returned unscathed.
In Cologne, though this was the 105th time in the war that air-raid sirens had indicated a bombing raid, the reaction of the civil defence force was slow. The bombers dropped 1455 tons of bombs, two-thirds of which were incendiaries. About 2500 separate fires were started, destroying more than 3300 buildings and damaging another 9500. Little was left standing save the city’s Gothic cathedral, Europe’s largest, with its art treasures intact. The great twin spires, 157 metres high, would serve as a navigational landmark for Allied aircraft on later raids deep into Germany.
The entire raid was over in just ninety minutes. Crews in the final run of bombers could see the glow of the blazing city from 160 kilometres away. Smoke from the fires rose 15,000 feet, and was so dense that the RAF could get no decent reconnaissance photos of the city for a week afterwards. Only four bombers were lost, in collisions over the city.
Two months later, when he became the first in 460 Squadron to complete a tour, Arthur Doubleday was awarded the DFC. Both he and his mate Bill Brill were subsequently seconded to the RAF as instructors, returning to No. 27 Operational Training Unit at Lichfield. They spent the next eleven months there, with Arthur promoted to Squadron Leader and Bill to Acting Squadron Leader.
A new elite unit, 156 Squadron RAF, Pathfinder Force (No. 8 Group), was set up on 15 August 1942. The Pathfinders’ role would be to locate and mark targets with flares for the main force to aim at, increasing the accuracy of their bombing. The Force was formed at the direct request of the Air Ministry and initially comprised five squadrons, one from each of the operational Bomber Command Groups: 156 Squadron (Wellingtons) from 1 Group, 109 Squadron (Wellingtons and Mosquitos) from 2 Group, 7 Squadron (Stirlings) from 3 Group, 35 Squadron (Halifaxes) from 4 Group, and 83 Squadron (Lancasters) from 5 Group.
Commanding Pathfinder Force was former Queensland jackaroo Donald Bennett. Born in 1910, he had joined the RAAF before transferring to the RAF in 1930. He completed a flying-boat course and became an instructor in 1933. But opportunities for advancement in the peacetime RAF were limited, and Bennett resigned and returned to Australia. Coming back to England two years later, he joined a fledgling commercial airline. In 1941, he returned to the RAF as an acting wing commander in command of an air navigation school. Command of 77 Squadron RAF and then 10 Squadron RAF followed. Bennett believed in never asking his men to do something he would not be prepared to do himself, and set an example by flying on many raids.
The Pathfinders were to lead the bomber stream to the target areas and drop sky markers and ground markers—red, green and yellow parachute flares that detonated at pre-set heights—at which the remainder of the force would aim. The initial objective was simply to take experienced crews and hone their navigation skills. There were also master bombers who would go down low, call in the main body of Pathfinders, and tell them where to drop their markers.
Six months after Bennett took over, he was promoted to air commodore and placed in command of the Pathfinder 8 Group. Tall and taciturn, Bennett took his responsibilities seriously. He explored every possible option for minimising aircrew losses and maximising the destructive power of the bomber force. RAF planning at this stage was based on the assumption that a Lancaster’s life was fifteen or sixteen operations. Bennett’s job was enormously stressful, and he did not suffer fools gladly. The dim and incompetent earned his wrath, and even the best airmen often found him difficult to work with. Fremantle-born Eric Silbert, a wireless operator/air gunner, was one of those who had first-hand experience of Bennett—by then an Air Vice-Marshal—when he later went through the Pathfinder Force Training School. It was here that those undergoing training learned what absolute importance Bennett placed on accuracy and timing. They had to be on the target within one minute of their given time, and their marker flares had to be dropped within 400 yards of the aiming point. If they failed to meet either requirement, they would have to report to Bennett. If they failed on two separate occasions, they would be asked to leave Pathfinder Force.
At the Pathfinder Force school there was one Nissen hut that fascinated the airmen. On its walls were graphs and statistics covering every imaginable detail of Bomber Command airmen lost on raids: age, nationality, where they had trained, the raid they were on—first or last, first few or last few, in what tour—the target, how and where they were shot down, and the time and altitude. There were no formal exams, but Bennett conducted his own after the men on the course had completed ten operational flights. Those who passed received the Pathfinder Force Award, a gold eagle worn underneath the wings on the lapel of the breast pocket. Eric Silbert was not prepared for what followed when he sat down at RAF Oakington station in front of Bennett. He was asked what foreign languages he spoke.
I included French, having done French all the time at school, and Bennett’s first question was: ‘Where did you go to school, Silbert?’ I told him Aquinas College, Perth. His answer was: ‘We’ll strike out French then, now next question.’ This was my only blemish. The interesting point about these exams was that one was apt to be asked [a question] on anything, whether it be navigation, gunnery or flying. Bennett was a believer that everyone should know at least some aspects about everyone’s job in the crew. On two occasions in my time he came around to Oakington, sat in front of all crews and asked them their problems. His answer was often: ‘I can do this and you should be able to. We all had the same training so
get on with the job.’ He was a practical man as well as a theoretician and was a great leader.
Despite his lack of interpersonal skills, Bennett’s high standards brought forward volunteers from among the best and the brightest of the bomber crews. Their aircraft were equipped with Gee equipment, or its later version, Oboe, and H2S, the world’s first ground-mapping radar, which enabled aircraft to drop flares and bombs accurately even in heavy fog or darkness. They could also differentiate between land and water, and thus indicate when the aircraft was crossing the coast, and the whereabouts of lakes and streams. Bennett later said that completing a single bombing raid over Germany was the equivalent of going through a great naval battle such as the Battle of Jutland, in 1916.
The Pathfinders first went into action on the night of 18–19 August 1942, when 118 Bomber Command aircraft attacked the German port of Flensburg on the Baltic Sea. Leading the raid were thirty-one Pathfinder bombers, among them Stirlings, Halifaxes, Lancasters and Wellingtons from RAF squadrons 7, 35, 83 and 156. Because of wind shifts, the bomber force drifted north of the target and the town was not hit. A second op against Frankfurt six nights later was only partially successful owing to heavy cloud conditions. But with Pathfinder Force now serving as guides, Bomber Command was becoming more accurate and more deadly.
5
THE DIMBOOLA REGATTA
Peter Isaacson had a new gunner, Joe Grose. His previous gunner Johnny Swain had fallen ill. Just shy of twenty-one, Joe had a mere twenty-six hours’ flying time. He had never flown at night, had not been to an Operational Training Unit, and had only flown straight and level, which meant he had never experienced Isaacson’s ducking and weaving manoeuvres to escape searchlights and flak. He was also prone to air sickness. Joe’s lack of experience worried the rest of the crew. But despite their concerns, he joined them for a raid on the night of 27–28 August 1942 against Kassel, an industrial centre on the Fulda river in central Germany.
Crossing the Zuiderzee bay on the North Sea coast, Joe began ‘vomiting like a dog’. In the bright moonlight, wireless operator Bill Copley, in the astro-navigation dome, saw a JU-88 night fighter screaming in to attack from almost dead astern. It opened fire, holing the Wellington in the port propeller and both wings. Bill yelled at Peter Isaacson, who instantly dived and turned the bomber.
Quickly regaining his composure, Joe Grose held his fire. The JU-88 was still too far away for accurate shooting. Again the night fighter came in and again Isaacson dived. He described what followed in his diary: ‘This time he closed up and Joe had a shot at him and hit him. The last we saw of the bastard he was diving away with smoke and a little flame coming from his port engine. We didn’t see him hit the ground, so we would only claim we had damaged one JU-88.’ Joe had shot down an enemy fighter with his first burst of fire in action at 13,000 feet. The crew had no more misgivings about him. Bill Copley expressed the relief of the crew: ‘Congratulations, Joe, you young bastard, welcome to the club!’
The Kassel raid was the third for Pathfinder Force. With little cloud over the city, they were able to illuminate the area well, allowing the main bomber force to destroy or badly damage more than 450 buildings, including all three factories of the Henschel aircraft company. The raid killed twenty-eight soldiers and fifteen civilians. Of the 306 aircraft attacking the target, thirty-one were lost—10.1 per cent of the force. It was a grim statistic.
A 200-bomber raid against Karlsruhe, in south-western Germany, followed on 3 September. Located on the Rhine near the Franco-German border, Karlsruhe was home to an oil refinery. The bombs caused an estimated 200 fires and damaged many houses.
Among the pilots on the raid was twenty-two-year-old Colin ‘Col’ Alt from Sydney. It was his thirteenth operation with 12 Squadron RAF. Flying a Wellington, he was returning over southern France when a German night fighter suddenly appeared. Desperately trying to evade the enemy plane, Col dived. With just enough light from the quarter moon, he estimated that he was about 100 feet above ground level. But in fact he was lower—so low that the port propeller hit something, probably a tree. Col immediately ordered the crew to the rear of the Wellington, but in the mayhem the wireless operator, Bill Holland, came forward, opened the second pilot’s seat and joined the skipper. Out of control, the bomber soon crashed, killing Bill and the front gunner. Col, together with the observer, the navigator and the tail gunner, survived. Two of the others dragged the unconscious Col from the aircraft and took cover in a hollow 100 metres away before the wreck exploded.
The four airmen walked for the next few days, living on their survival-kit rations. Keen for a cup of coffee, they walked into a village cafe, but Col noticed a soldier eyeing them suspiciously. They quickly left, but were soon confronted by German soldiers and arrested. What struck Col was the wording on the Germans’ belt buckles: ‘Gott mit uns’, or ‘God with us’. ‘I immediately thought, No, He’s with us,’ Col recalled. He would spend the rest of the war in German prisoner-of-war camps.
The Pathfinders led the way again a week later when 479 bombers headed for Düsseldorf, the industrial and oil refinery centre in the lower Rhine basin. Using red target indicators dubbed ‘Pink Pansies’, the Pathfinders successfully marked the targets for the bombers that followed. The raid caused major damage to the city’s industrial base, stopping production for various periods. It also destroyed or badly damaged about 2500 houses and killed 132 people.
Among those taking part was Harry ‘Hadge’ McPherson, a rear gunner from Horsham, in western Victoria. Harry was one of three brothers who had joined the RAAF; he had been posted to 77 Squadron RAF, a Halifax squadron. Seated in the gun turret at the tail end of the fuselage, twenty-one-year-old Hadge had the loneliest job in the aircraft, with only the intercom to let him speak to his crew mates. But such isolation didn’t dent his youthful optimism. A few days after returning from the Düsseldorf raid, his first op, Hadge wrote home about the experience, describing it as a ‘wonderful feeling’. All the boys in the crew had been excited by the prospect of dropping their first lot of bombs, he said. When the intercom became unserviceable just after they left the English coast, they all swore angrily, thinking they would have to return and miss the raid. However, the radio operator managed to fix the problem, and they flew on. It was ‘a queer feeling’ when they first saw the Dutch coast and the searchlights, he wrote.
We wondered how in the hell we would get through them safely. However, we managed it—a few searchlights got near to us, in fact one did get us but we soon lost him. It’s funny to see all the flak bursting all over the sky—they look as harmless as anything—it was just like Guy Fawkes day or the Dimboola Regatta.
We were all just like a lot of kids when we got near the target, as if we were going to a picnic. The boys in the front of our crate, [pilot Jack Rank], Bruce and Russ, said that they couldn’t mistake the target, Düsseldorf—they could see it for 20 or 30 miles before we got there. I could see the bright glow from where I was. When we got there we could see our target beautifully—it was just like daylight—the boys ahead of us had already got a good blaze going.
You should have heard the message that the boys sent down with the bombs. I expressed my feeling to Hitler too. Then when we went over the target I had the view from my turret, it was a sight I have been dying to see for months—it was like one big furnace down there and when I saw all the searchlights and ack-ack that we had gone through, I nearly took a fit.
A few minutes later a JU-88 came onto our tail—I can tell you it is a funny feeling—I just opened my mouth and nothing would come out. Anyway I told Jack which way to dive, and did he dive! I never saw the Jerry again. Coming back we seemed to go through more searchlights and flak, you have no idea how pretty it looks. One burst came pretty close, but that was all and I was about the proudest person out when we left the Belgian coast.
At that point, Hadge thought he could relax. He opened his vacuum flask and began to pour himself a cup of coffee while keeping a good lookout at
the same time. Dazed by the experience he’d just been through, he just kept pouring. ‘It spilt all over me—I had coffee from head to foot and I just sat there and laughed. I could still see Düsseldorf glowing from 50 miles away—it was a very gratifying sight. I didn’t get to bed until 7 o’clock in the morning and I can tell you I slept pretty soundly until 4 o’clock in the afternoon. The [Officer in Charge] was very pleased with our little job.’ To Hadge, the success of the raid amounted to payback for the earlier Nazi bombing raids on English cities.
Peter Isaacson also had reason to be pleased. After twenty-two ops, in November 1942 he was decorated with the Distinguished Flying Medal. He promptly headed for the local pub. ‘It was a darned good party,’ he wrote home, ‘altho’ I’m afraid I got a bit tight. The boys presented me with a cigar and made me smoke it on the spot. Naturally, it almost, repeat almost, made me ill.’
He also underwent a conversion course to fly the Lancasters that were coming into service in 460 Squadron. The change came shortly after Wing Commander Keith Kaufmann took over from Commander Arthur Hubbard on 1 September 1942. Kaufmann was a far different personality from the more reserved Hubbard, who had been a steadying influence after 460 Squadron was formed. On his first day with his new squadron, the Victorian-born Kaufmann walked into the sergeants’ mess, took off his coat and said, ‘I believe you blokes are pretty good drinkers; let’s get stuck into it and see how good you are.’ He became a popular commanding officer, mixing with all ranks, and was credited with resolving many hitches in promotions for aircrew and ground staff alike.
When Kaufmann arrived, Wellingtons were being phased out in favour of Halifaxes. But crews were far from happy with the new bombers, which had a disturbingly high crash rate. Kaufmann figured out that the problem stemmed from a hydraulic fluid pipe in the starboard motor closest to the cockpit. The pipe would fracture during certain flying manoeuvres under full power, spraying the hydraulic fluid and causing a fire in the motor. The squadron lost two crews before the fault was corrected.