Ready for Düsseldorf. S/Ldr J.G. Woolatt’s crew prepares to board their 12 Squadron aircraft before a raid in April 1944. This Lancaster was to be lost in June that year with a different crew, four of those on board surviving (Wickenby Archive)
The marking for the Aulnoye attack was carried out by Mosquitos from 8 (PFF) Group but plans were now well advanced for the two Lincolnshire-based groups to operate more independently. 5 Group had managed to prize two PFF squadrons, 83 and 97, away from 8 Group and they moved to Coningsby in April as the group’s own marking squadrons. 1 Group’s own pathfinders were somewhat more modest. Earlier that month S/Ldr Harold ‘Bill’ Breakspear, an outstanding flight commander at 100 Squadron, was asked to form a new unit, 1 Group Special Duties Flight, and given the choice of just five further 1 Group crews to man it. He went for F/Lt Bill Hull at 101, F/Lt F. Gillan (100 Squadron), F/Lt G. Russel-Fry (103), F/O J. Stewart (626) and P/O J. Marks (625). They all moved to Binbrook where they were to operate as a separate unit alongside 460 Squadron and began training immediately, using the bombing range at Misson, not far from 1 Group HQ at Bawtry, to practice marking techniques.
1 SDF, as it was officially designated, was to have a brief but successful spell of operations, opening with an attack on an ammunition dump at Maintenon at the end of April. With S/Ldr Breakspear directing operations as the Master Bomber, it proved a huge success. 100 Squadron’s records note the bombing resulted a ‘terrific fireworks display…a brilliant success of the whole show’ and, in a congratulatory note, Air Vice Marshal Rice, OC 1 Group, commended Breakspear on some ‘magnificent work’, adding: ‘The job was done with precision and complete efficiency.’ The Special Duties Flight was to operate throughout the summer of 1944 but was disbanded at the end of August when, because of Allied advances, suitable targets were hard to find and its crews were released for normal duties. 1 Group’s Operational report added: ‘The magnificent marking carried out on some of the marshalling yards of France has been amply rewarded by the chaotic state of the enemy’s lines of communications.’
John Jenkinson was a flight engineer with 103 Squadron at Elsham and his crew were posted to the SDF during the summer of 1944 when they were told the flight was being used for ‘visual marking of lightly defended targets in France’. Some of those who had flown earlier with the flight might have taken exception to the words ‘lightly defended’.
A wonderfully evocative shot at an icy dispersal at Elsham Wolds in March 1944. The WAAF alongside the Lancaster is Rose Hammond. (Elsham Wolds Association)
Another man who later flew with the Special Duties Flight was Mike Stedman, whose 103 Squadron crew spent some weeks at Binbrook. He particularly remembered the training regime during which he had to fly at low level wearing blacked out goggles while his bomb aimer and flight engineer guided him around high ground and electricity pylons. It was, he said, great fun!
The Poles of 300 Squadron were to resume bombing on the night of April 18-19, attacking railway targets near Cologne and Rouen. They had moved into their new home at Faldingworth on March 1, delighted at last to have a ‘real’ airfield to call their own and to finally get their hands on Lancasters. The squadron historian notes that while Faldingworth was a rudimentary airfield with cold Nissen huts and little in the way of amenities, it did have long concrete runways and that meant 300 Squadron could finally convert from Wellingtons to Lancasters.
Earlier in the year the squadron’s A Flight had continued mining operations while the remainder of the aircrew began Lancaster training, initially at Ludford, under the experienced leadership of S/Ldr Pozyczka. Their airfield at Ingham was too small to cope with Lancaster operations and the squadron also suffered from a chronic shortage of ground crews. Eventually part of their training was transferred to Hemswell where the Poles flew alongside the aircraft of 1 Group’s Lancaster Finishing School until they were deemed ready for operations. Once at Faldingworth more Lancasters began to arrive and S/Ldr Pozyczka was promoted to wing commander and took command of 300, quickly bringing the squadron up to operational readiness. 300’s former airfield, Ingham, became the new home of 1481 and 1687 Bomber Training Flights and was destined to end the war as 1 Group’s only airfield still with grass runways.
The raid on Rouen was part of the rail strategy and one of the aircraft lost was a Lancaster from 625 Squadron, shot down by an intruder as it prepared to land. The destruction of this aircraft was witnessed by a 101 Squadron crew as they waited in the Binbrook-Ludford-Kelstern ‘stack’. Wireless operator John Allison remembered their rear gunner shouting that the fighter was dropping flares, only to realise it was a burning Lancaster crashing onto the Lincolnshire Wolds. Almost throughout the war Luftwaffe intruders had provided a deadly reminder to bomber crews that they were not safe until they were actually on the ground and they would continue to do this until the closing weeks of the war.
Railway targets may have had priority but a number of German targets were also hit in April, including Düsseldorf, Karlsruhe and Essen. 101 Squadron’s ABC aircraft also operated on other attacks on Munich, Brunswick and Schweinfurt. The Karlsruhe attack cost 1 Group nine aircraft, including the first two Lancaster losses for 300 Squadron. 103 Squadron also lost two although there were no casualties. One was damaged over the target by a night fighter and the pilot, F/Sgt Cecil Ogden, managed to ditch the aircraft in Sandwich Bay while the second was hit by incendiaries falling from another Lancaster over the target. The crew was ordered to bail out but the pilot quickly managed to regain control but not before the mid-upper gunner had already jumped. The aircraft managed to return to Elsham but was so badly damaged it was struck off charge. F/Sgt Ogden and crew were to be killed on operations shortly afterwards but 40 years after their ditching the remains of their aircraft were revealed off the Kent coast during an exceptionally low tide. That same operation was also to cost 626 Squadron dearly, with three aircraft failing to return to Wickenby. There were no survivors from the Lancasters of F/Sgt Fred Baker or from those flown by Canadian warrant officers Murray McPherson and Victor Bernyk.
Ready for ops, a 626 Squadron crew, 1944. They are (back row, left to right) bomb aimer F/Sgt Leo Curtain, pilot F/O Johnny Oram, wireless operator W/O E. Just, flight engineer F/Sgt Trevor Jenkins; front: mid-upper F/Sgt ‘Logger’ Wood, navigator F/O John Bright, and the rear gunner, Sgt ‘Spider’ Webb. Both gunners were later to be killed. (Wickenby Archive)
101 lost a highly decorated crew when supporting a 5 Group attack on Schweinfurt, F/O Philip Rowe’s Lancaster being shot down over France. The pilot had recently been awarded a DFC and the other seven members of his crew DFMs for a recent operation. None of the eight men lived to receive their decorations. The squadron was to lose another two crews during a successful attack on tank production factories in Friedrichshafen, close to the Swiss border. The bombers had managed to evade the night fighters until they were leaving the target area when W/O Bert Noble’s Lancaster was hit by cannon fire and exploded. The aircraft actually came down in Switzerland and the two surviving members of the crew were interred. A second 101 Lancaster came down on the other side of the border and the five survivors became prisoners.
The same raid was to cost 166 and 460 Squadrons three Lancasters each. There was only one survivor from the Binbrook Lancasters, one of which was flown by one of the flight commander, S/Ldr Eric Jarman DFC, a very popular man amongst his fellow Australians. The day before Jarman and his crew had posed for a portrait at Binbrook by the Australian artist, Stella Bowen. Today, that portrait hangs in the Australian War Memorial Museum. Interestingly, one of the other Binbrook crews, that of F/O George Brown, were all British, a sign perhaps that there were not enough Australian air crew coming through to fill the gaps in what was a very large squadron. At Kirmington one aircraft, Q-Queenie, was badly damaged in a battle with a night fighter in which the rear gunner, Glaswegian Sgt Lockhart Little, was killed. P/O Len Hunt continued his bombing run only for the aircraft to be attacked again. The aircraft was v
ery difficult to handle but P/O Hunt and his flight engineer, Sgt Saunders, who had made no mention of being wounded in the second attack, had to use all their strength to stop the aircraft going into a fatal drive. Finally they used cable from the aircraft’s trailing aerial to lash the control column back and eventually made it back to the emergency airfield at Woodbridge where they landed the aircraft on just one wheel. There was an immediate DFC for the pilot and a DFM for the flight engineer, who had to be hospitalised with his wounds.
P/O Bob Eadie and one of his crew atop their Lancaster ‘Nulli Secundus’ (Second to None) at Elsham, autumn 1943. This Lancaster and crew both helped form the nucleus of 576 Squadron at the airfield soon afterwards. Nulli Secundus was lost over Berlin with a different crew on Christmas Eve that year. (Elsham Wolds Association)
One of the other aircraft lost from 166 Squadron also came down in Switzerland and the two survivors both later contended it was Swiss anti-aircraft fire and not a night fighter as shown in the official records which was the cause of their destruction. They wouldn’t be the first or last RAF crew to suffer at the hands of the neutral Swiss.
On the night of May 3-4 crews from 1 and 5 Groups were briefed for an attack on a German military depot at Mailly-le-Camp, about 60 miles east of Paris. At Kirmington, crews were shown a scale model of the depot and were assured the attack would be ‘a piece of cake, just like falling off a log’. What it turned out to be was the worst night of the war for 1 Group, a night in which they were to lose 137 men killed and 28 Lancasters with a 29th crashing on return, a loss rate exceeding 15%.
For the men who had been to Berlin and endured Nuremberg it seemed a straight forward operation. Because of the proximity of the village of Mailly, bombing would be from 5,000 feet with Mosquitoes from 5 Group marking the target, the whole raid being ‘conducted’ by W/Cmdr Leonard Cheshire, who would act as Master Bomber. The attack was due to open just after midnight with aiming points at either end of the barrack buildings and a third on nearby tank workshops. W/Cmdr Cheshire was to lead four Mosquitoes which would drop markers on the first aiming point and the area would then be illuminated by 83 and 97 Squadrons allowing 140 5 Group Lancasters to bomb. After a further 10 minutes, W/Cmdr Cheshire would mark the second aiming point which would be bombed by another 140 Lancasters from 1 Group. The third aiming point, the tank workshops, was close to the village and the intention was that it would be marked by 1 Group’s Special Duties Flight and then attacked by the remaining 30 1 Group aircraft.
The aircraft began leaving Lincolnshire shortly after 10pm and, after crossing the French coast near Dieppe, descended to the bombing height. Phase one went almost exactly to plan. W/Cmdr Cheshire’s markers were only slightly off target but a second load, dropped from 400ft by W/Cmdr Dave Shannon, was in precisely the right spot and the first wave were called in by the main force controller, W/Cmdr L.C. Deane of 83 Squadron. They were currently orbiting a point 15 miles away, waiting for the order to bomb and this was when things started to go horribly wrong. Only a few crews heard the order as Deane’s transmission was suddenly drowned out by an American Forces Broadcasting Service station which suddenly broke into the bombers’ frequency. One Lancaster crew member later recalled: ‘All I could hear was the tune Deep in the Heart of Texas followed by hand clapping and a noise like a party going on. There was other garbled talk in the background but it was drowned out by the music.’
The crews that heard Deane’s message went in to bomb while a few others used their initiative and followed them and the resulting bombing was very accurate. W/Cmdr Cheshire, in the meantime, realised what was happening and ordered in the final markers with the hope they would be spotted by the circling bombers and they would take it as a signal to attack.
By this time the 170 1 Group Lancasters had arrived and began circling their own holding point, which was marked by burning yellow Target Indicators. Their arrival coincided almost exactly with the first of the German night fighters and within minutes many more turned up, finding easy targets amongst the bombers silhouetted again the flares below. With still no clear instructions, some pilots moved away from the main area while others stuck to their orders and it was amongst the latter that the heaviest casualties occurred.
Finally markers were dropped on the second aiming point and then 1 Group aircraft were ordered to go in and bomb. What happened next was later described as ‘like the starting gate at the Derby’ as Lancasters streamed in to drop their bombs, again with great accuracy. 1 Group SDF had had problems locating its target but, rather than risk bombs falling on the village, S/Ldr Breakspear ordered his aircraft to attack the main target.
Bombers were still crashing in flames all around the area. One of those shot down was an ABC Lancaster from Ludford flown by F/Lt John Keard. It was hit by the upward-firing guns of a night fighter and exploded, the aircraft breaking into three parts. The rear gunner, 19-year-old Sgt Jack Worsford, was trapped in the rear section without his parachute. He had been wounded in the attack and lost consciousness as the rear section of his Lancaster spun down like a sycamore seed some 7,500ft to the ground. It is believed the tail section of the aircraft hit some high tension cables and then landed in trees, both helping soften the fall and making Jack Worsford one of the luckiest men in Bomber Command. The wreckage had come down near the village of Aubeterre and he was found by a group of people from the village who had walked across some fields to examine the wreckage. They were astounded to find anyone alive. Apart from the wound in his neck he had a broken leg and cuts and bruises. They carried him back to the village but it was clear he needed hospital treatment and so the Germans were called. Sgt Worsford was one of only two survivors from four 101 Squadron aircraft lost in the raid. Many of the men who died were replacements for the crews killed only a month ago over Nuremburg.
P/O Roy Whalley and his 576 Squadron crew, pictured shortly before their aircraft was shot down over Mailly-le-Camp, only the flight engineer and navigator surviving. (Elsham Wolds Association)
Worst hit of all was 460 Squadron at Binbrook which lost six Lancasters and the lives of 39 men. Amongst them was F/Lt Bill Hull’s all-British crew who were on their 30th operation, most of which they had flown with 101 Squadron before joining the Special Duties Flight at Binbrook, transferring to 460 to finish their tour. Hull had already won a DFC and three of his all-sergeant crew had DFMs. 460 was becoming an increasingly cosmopolitan squadron and F/Sgt George Gritty was the only Australian in his crew when they arrived at Binbrook as replacements in mid-April. Mailly was their first and last operation. Sgt Bill Williams, the crew’s bomb aimer, later recalled how excited the crew were to reach the target area when they would finally begin to put to good use the two years’ training they had received. They were ordered to orbit a yellow marker and he then heard a series of rattling noises on the fuselage. It was cannon fire from a night fighter and the crew was ordered to bail out. Sgt Williams was one of three men to get clear of the aircraft before it went down. All three evaded capture, along with 13 other men who flew to Mailly-le-Camp that night, one of the highest figures of the war so far. Another who evaded capture was Australian F/Sgt Ralph Watson, one of five men to make it home from the crew of 166 Squadron’s Z-Zebra. He was back in England by early August. The flight engineer in the same aircraft, Sgt Jack Marsden, landed with only one strap of his parachute intact. He was later picked up by members of the Maquis and reunited with his pilot, P/O Gerald Harrison. As both were being moved a car carrying Sgt Marsden was fired on by the Germans and he was wounded and taken to a nearby hospital. Later, as he was about to be moved to a PoW camp in Germany he was rescued by three heroic Resistance members who hoped to get him to Normandy where he could reach Allied lines. His health deteriorated and it wasn’t until late August that he was finally handed over to the Americans. Back in England he was to spend four years in hospital recovering from his ordeal.
An ABC Lancaster of 101 Squadron pictured at Ludford soon after the aircraft arrived on the squ
adron in spring 1944. It was to be lost on ABC duties on July 21, 1944 when it was shot down over Holland during an attack on the fuel plant at Homberg in the Ruhr. (Dennis Smith)
Z-Zebra was one of three Lancasters which failed to make it back to Kirmington that night. Things were even worse at Wickenby where four aircraft from 12 Squadron and three from 626 were shot down. Five members of F/O Maxwell’s 12 Squadron crew, including the pilot, made it back to England thanks to the help of local population. A sixth, Sgt Jim Davidson, was shot while hiding in the nearby town of Troyes and died of his wounds at the end of June. Of the squadron’s other three losses only one man survived from the crews of P/O John Carter, F/O Jim Ormrod and F/Sgt Sydney Payne. Over at 626 all 21 men on board the three lost aircraft were killed. The bomb load on P/O David Jackson’s Lancaster exploded as it was approaching the target and only two bodies, including that of the pilot, were ever found. One of 625 Squadron’s flight commander, S/Ldr Gray, was one of only two survivors from the three Lancasters lost from Kelstern. His mid-upper gunner, Sgt Peter Johnson, was another who managed to evade capture after their aircraft was shot down, some time after leaving the Mailly-le-Camp area. Another crew lost from Kelstern was that of F/Sgt Neil McGaw. They were on their 15th operation and their navigator, 23-year-old Sgt Fred Clarke, was a Lincolnshire man. His family home was at Hackthorn, only 15 miles from Kelstern.
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