By comparison, 103’s operational debut passed almost without incident. Seven aircraft, led by S/Ldr Holford, went to Düsseldorf and all returned safely, although Holford’s aircraft sported 36 holes caused by flak. He had suffered engine problems on the way out and was unable to maintain height. He bombed from 8,000ft and then, on the way home, flew at low level over a Luftwaffe airfield while his gunners shot up a line of parked aircraft. The first operational loss came six days later when Sgt Joe Gilby’s Halifax crashed into the Humber on its return from a raid on Duisburg. There were no survivors. 103 was to lose nine more Halifaxes and the lives of 46 men on operations before the order came towards the end of October to switch to Lancasters. Amongst the casualties was S/Ldr Sid Fox, who had won a DFM with 83 Squadron, and was into his second tour.
103 Squadron was to be the only unit in 1 Group to fly the Halifax operationally and it was also among the first to receive Lancasters. No sooner had the squadron been informed of the change than the first batch of factory-fresh Lancasters arrived, four of them being lost on operations within a matter of weeks.
The Australians of 460 got a new CO early in September when W/Cmdr Keith Kaufmann, one of six brothers serving in the Australian armed forces, arrived to oversee Halifax conversion training at Breighton. The Australians lost one aircraft in a training accident at a cost of eight lives, before being told on October 20 that it was to receive Lancasters. (Kaufmann was a hugely popular figure at Breighton, legend having it that he announced his arrival by walking into the mess and announcing: ‘I hear you blokes are pretty good drinkers. Let’s get stuck in and see how good you are!’) The squadron’s conversion flight later moved to nearby Holme-on-Spalding Moor where its Halfaxes were replaced by four Lancasters and four Manchesters before returning to Breighton. There it was joined by 103’s Conversion Flight and the two units merged to become 1656 Heavy Conversion Unit and moved to Lindholme. The role of the HCU was to do exactly what the term implied, training new crews on four-engined flying. This they would do on an initial mixture of Halifaxes, Manchesters (twin-engined but with some of the characteristics of the Lancaster) and the few Lancasters available. Later, as squadrons demanded every Lancaster coming off the production line, another link in the training chain was forged with the creation of Lancaster Finishing Schools. 1 LFS was formed at Hemswell early in 1944 and was in business for most of the year, providing the final training for crews before they were sent to 1 Group Lancaster squadrons.
Canadian pilot Edgar Jones and his navigator Ted Hooke with some of the damage to their 103 Squadron Lancaster after an eventful trip to Berlin. Jones, then 20, was awarded an immediate DFC for getting the aircraft back to Elsham and was to receive a bar to the medal when he completed a tour with the squadron. He went on to become one of Canada’s best-known naturalists, dying in 2011 at the age of 88 (Elsham Wolds Association)
Air and ground crew with 460 Squadron’s A-Aussie at Binbrook, 1943 (John Kinghorn)
1 Group’s initial Lancaster conversion courses at Breighton proved far from satisfactory.
One of the young 101 Squadron pilots sent to Breighton was F/Sgt Marcel Fussell who later recorded that priority always appeared to be given to 460’s crews. So frustrated was he that he cycled back to Holme-on-Spalding Moor (it was only seven miles away) and reported his frustrations to his CO. The following day one of the new conversion unit’s Lancasters and an instructor arrived from Breighton to begin a conversion course for the remaining 101 Squadron men.
1 Group’s fourth Lancaster squadron was to be 12. It moved from Binbrook to Wickenby in late September and continued to operate its Wellingtons 111s for another month before conversion work began. It was to spend most of that period on ‘gardening’ operations, dropping sea mines in enemy coastal waters. Each sector from the Baltic to the Bay of Biscay was named after a flower, hence ‘gardening’ trips, the mines often referred to as ‘seeds’. These were mostly performed by a small number of aircraft, often operating at low level in areas protected by German flak ships. Unlike bombing, there was no spectacular conclusion but, just like bombing, it was highly dangerous work and losses were high and the chances of survival over the sea were minimal. In that month at Wickenby 12 Squadron lost five Wellingtons on mining operations with 17 men being killed and just one aircraft on a bombing operation.
The first Lancaster operation mounted by 1 Group came on the night of November 20 when 101 Squadron sent 12 aircraft as part of a force of 232 bombers which attacked Turin, the largest operation so far against an Italian target. The following night Lancasters from 103 Squadron each dropped four 1,500lb mines off Biarritz. The next night 12 Lancasters from Elsham were part of a force which attacked Stuttgart. Six nights later seven aircraft from 103 Squadron took part in an attack on Turin in northern Italy. All returned safely and the crews expressed delight with their new aircraft, which could now carry a greater bomb load over an increased distance at a greater height than anything that had gone before. While the Elsham Lancasters returned safely, two other 1 Group aircraft, Wellingtons from 142 and 150 Squadrons, did not make it back, one crashing while trying to land at Manston in Kent while the second was abandoned by its crew over France. Italian targets were beyond the range of Lincolnshire- and Yorkshire-based Wellingtons and the aircraft taking part in this attack had needed to ‘stage’ through airfields in East Anglia and, in 142’s case, Kent. Even then many others made it back with little more than fumes in their fuel tanks.
Among the first Lancasters to be lost by 1 Group in 1942 was an aircraft tragically shot down by the anti-aircraft defences over Redcar. It was from 101 Squadron at Holme-on-Spalding Moor and was returning from a mining operation. There were no survivors from the seven-man crew. The pilot was Marcel Fussell, the young man who had so shown such determination in ensuring his squadron received adequate conversion training to Lancasters only a few weeks earlier.
A-Aussie of 460 Squadron ready to receive a 4,000lb cookie. (Laurie Wood)
That autumn was a particularly tough one for the 1 Group Wellington squadrons. In the three-month period before the Turin raid, 142 lost 26 Wellingtons and the lives 85 men. Five Wellingtons were shot down in a single night in an attack on Kassel, all from ‘B’ Flight and a third of those that left Waltham, and three more in an attack on Essen. It was to take part in a series of raids on Italian targets, usually operating from Manston, and these were to cost another four aircraft. However, the Wellington lost on its return from Turin was to be 142’s last from Waltham. Early in November several crews were posted to the new airfield at Blyton to form the nucleus of a new squadron, 199, and at the same time 142 was put on notice for posting to Egypt. The squadron’s final Bomber Command operation came on the night of November 25-26 when five aircraft left to drop mines off Brest. Waltham was now set to join the Lancaster club.
Another squadron on the move that autumn was 150. It moved out of Snaith, which was to become a 4 Group airfield, for Kirmington which officially became a satellite of Elsham in October 1942. 150’s stay there was to last a little over six weeks before it, too, was on its way to the Middle East. Kirmington had opened in January that year but had been loaned to 21 Group Flying Training Command and was used by 15 (P) AFU until October when personnel and aircraft were moved to the unit’s parent base at Leconfield in East Yorkshire and Kirmington was readied for bomber operations. 150 Squadron was to fly a handful of operations from there in October and November, during which it lost nine aircraft before it finally stood down.
By the end of the year all that remained at Kirmington were the home echelons of 142 and 150 Squadrons and in January 1943 they were merged as the reformed 166 Squadron. 166 had been part of the new Independent Bomber Force formed in 1918, one of the first long-range bomber forces in the RAF. It was disbanded in 1919 but reformed again in 1936 and the outbreak of war saw the squadron operating Whitleys in a training role before being disbanded and its staff and aircraft absorbed into 10 OTU. Now it was back in the bombing business a
gain and was to play a major role in the final two and a half years of the bombing war.
Elsham lost its first Lancaster on operations on the night of December 2-3 when F/O Bob Cumming’s aircraft was shot down during an attack on Frankfurt. 1 Group squadrons were to lose seven more before the end of the year. By the conclusion of the war, however, another 1,207 of the group’s Lancasters were lost in action or in flying accidents, almost exactly one third of all those lost during the war in Bomber Command service.
A rare picture of a Halifax II of 460 Squadron’s Conversion Flight at Breighton in late 1942. (Frank Watson via the Real Aero Club, Breighton)
Chapter 7
Happy Valley
Assault on the Ruhr:
Spring and Summer 1943
The forecast was bleak…and that didn’t just apply to the weather as another new year of war dawned. On airfields across North Lincolnshire and into Yorkshire the beginning of 1943 just promised a lot more of the same, heavier and more frequent operations and far more casualties. All those expectations were to be exceeded.
An operational tour for an aircrew involved completing 30 sorties against enemy targets although, at this stage of the war, some only counted as a half-sortie as attacks on some of the Channel ports and French targets were considered somewhat less dangerous than those on more distant operations over Germany. However, the effects of being trapped in a burning bomber over Boulogne were just as fatal as over Berlin and this policy was, fortunately for many, to be changed but, for now, bomber crews had to soldier on.
Aircrew got just six days’ leave in every six week period of operations and, for many, it was a case of hanging on until the next spell of leave came up, hoping that their’s would not be the next empty dispersal, their lockers being cleared out or their place empty in the mess. Life expectancy on an operational bomber squadron by 1943 had dropped to the level of a subaltern on the Somme in 1916 yet few were the men who cracked beneath the strain. Some, of course, didn’t last long at all. F/O Nebojska Kujundzic was one of the few Yugoslav nationals to serve in Britain’s armed forces. He was born in Belgrade and was at Leeds University, studying engineering when the war broke out. He joined the university’s air squadron and from there graduated to the RAF. After pilot training at Pensacola in Florida he became part of a new Lancaster crew at Lindholme and joined 103 Squadron at Elsham on March 3, 1943. The following morning he and his crew were detailed to complete a standard cross country exercise and left Elsham soon after lunch. At 4pm as the aircraft was flying over Peterborough an engine burst into flames and the aircraft quickly became unstable. He ordered his crew to jump but there was insufficient time for him to escape and he perished when the bomber crashed near Yaxley, a little over 24 hours after he joined the squadron.
Huge national resources were being poured into the bombing campaign with factories working round the clock to produce new aircraft, dozens of new airfields under construction and the seemingly endless supply of new crews being turned out of the training schools in Britain and overseas, the Operational Training Units and Heavy Conversion Units. New navigational aids, target marking and radar were all playing, or about to play, their part yet the enemies remained the same and, it seemed, even more formidable than ever. Luftwaffe defences were learning to cope with the bomber streams with new tactics involving free-roaming single-engined fighters and upward-firing cannon mounted in twin-engined night fighters, better and more sophisticated radar-predicted flak and radar-controlled searchlights were taking their toll on the British bombers. And there was still the oldest enemy of all, the weather, and it was particularly pernicious in January 1943.
The attention of the bombing campaign was now focused very much on Germany and on the Ruhr Valley in particular. Here was the heart of Hitler’s war machine and it was on this area that the wrath of Bomber Command would fall. But ‘Happy Valley’ was the most heavily defended area on earth and the attacks rained on it for much of 1943 were to cost the lives of countless British and Commonwealth lives. At the heart of the Ruhr was the city of Essen where the anti-aircraft defences were so strong that bomber crews claimed it was possible to walk on the flak. It was Essen which claimed 1 Group’s first losses of the year on the night of January 4-5 when both 101 and 460 each lost a Lancaster and with them the lives of 14 men. 12 Squadron at Wickenby was to suffer more than most during the first few weeks of 1943, losing nine Lancasters and 56 men killed in just six weeks. The first of those, with a mixed British, Canadian and Australian crew vanished on a mining operation with a second following soon afterwards over Essen. Then an attack on Berlin on the night of January 17-18 cost the squadron four Lancasters, one crew surviving to become PoWs. During the same raid the radio operator of a 460 Squadron Lancaster was killed when his aircraft was abandoned when out of fuel over Flamborough Head. As he jumped from the aircraft, Sgt Dudley Corfe’s radio leads snagged his parachute lines and he fell to his death. Among the 19 Lancasters lost on the raid were three from heavy conversion units, including one from 1656 HCU at Lindholme. The aircraft – which was used frequently on bombing operations during this period – was flown by New Zealander F/Lt Sefton Hood and the crew included five Australians and a British mid-upper gunner. All were killed.
P/O Saunders in the mid-upper turret of 12 Squadron’s ED548 V-Victor in March 1943. This aircraft exploded and crashed in the Firth of Fourth in July 1943 killing S/Ldr Robert Baxter and his crew. (Wickenby Archive)
Some squadrons were still soldiering on with Wellingtons, although they were being used less frequently on the more distant German targets. New to 1 Group in January was 166 Squadron which flew its first operation to Lorient on the night of January 29-30. Twelve aircraft left Kirmington but only six reached the target area, three turning back with severe icing problems, one crash-landed with engine problems at Colerne in Wiltshire, another turned back with faulty equipment and the final aircraft, piloted by W/O Bob Grey, failed to return.
The limitations of the Wellington to operate as an all-weather bomber were being exposed in 166 Squadron. Early in February they sent 11 aircraft to Hamburg but only one made it, the others all turning back with severe icing problems. Wellingtons were still in operation with the Polish squadrons at in 1 Group and with 199 Squadron, which moved into Ingham at the beginning of February. 300 Squadron moved back to Hemswell where, shortly afterwards, 301 Squadron was disbanded and its air and ground staff absorbed into 300, 301 losing its last Wellington to a night fighter while on a mining trip to the Frisians on the night of January 9-10. Losses amongst Polish aircrew could not be replaced as readily as those amongst British or Commonwealth squadrons. 300’s squadron history records the unit being ‘seriously under-manned’, a situation which only improved when 301 was disbanded. At Hemswell 300 and 305 operated in tandem until the summer of 1943 before the airfield closed for runway construction and 300 went back to Ingham, 305 being transferred to the new Tactical Air Force. The move back to Ingham was not a popular one amongst 300 crews and personnel. Ingham had widely dispersed accommodation, unlike the excellent pre-war facilities at Hemswell, and aircrew found operating from the bumpy grass runways unpleasant.
Lancaster LM321 pictured soon after it was delivered to 12 Squadron in the spring of 1943. It later served with 460, 550 and 100 Squadrons before being lost over France flying from Waltham as HW-K in June 1944 when three of P/O Skinner’s crew were killed. (Wickenby Archive).
One of the 305 Squadron Wellingtons lost from Hemswell ditched in the North Sea after turning back from Wilhelmshaven, the crew managing to get off a distress signal before the aircraft went down. They were picked up several hours later by an air-sea rescue launch but, in the meantime, six volunteer crews from 166 Squadron spent four hours scouring the North Sea for them. They saw nothing, save for some of the new air-sea rescue floats which had recently been moored in the sea, each providing shelter, food and radio equipment for downed bomber crews.
199 Squadron moved from Blyton to briefly join 300 at Ingham
and flew operationally until June when it was transferred to 3 Group and converted to Stirlings. In its time at Ingham the squadron was to lose nine aircraft and the lives of 42 men.
While the winter months proved tough going for the Wellington crews, things were not much better for 103 in its new Lancasters. Despite the awful weather that January, the squadron went to Essen no fewer than six times along with two trips each to Düsseldorf and Berlin and a single visit to Hamburg. Four of the Essen raids came in quick succession and on each occasion the weather proved a major hurdle. Oil pipes and gun turrets froze, engines failed to start. On one occasion half the aircraft prepared for an attack failed to take off, on another half the aircraft that left Elsham turned back with problems. And for those that did make the target area, the defenders were as resolute as ever, four Lancasters being lost from the Essen raids.
1 Group Page 9