Keith Lewis, who came from Llandeilo in South Wales, joined the Royal Air Force early in the war and, after a period of assessment, was selected for training as a wireless operator/air gunner. He was sent to the No. 3 Signals School at Compton Bassett in Wiltshire. On February 9, 1942 he qualified and was then sent to No. 2 Radio School at Yatesbury where he was instructed in the use of Marconi 1154 and 1155 radios and Morse code – he had to be able to read and transmit 15 words a minute with no errors – along with the use of the Aldis lamp and the use of flares. It was at this Wiltshire airfield where he finally got to fly in the station’s Proctor and Dominie trainers, learning the art of airborne radio transmission and receiving. Sgt Lewis, as he now was, was one of 50,000 trainees who passed through Yatesbury between 1939 and 1945 and what he learned there was to stand him, and the crew of a 1 Group Lancaster, in good stead in the years to come.
After Yatesbury there came a brief gunnery course, in which he passed out top of his group, before moving on to No. 2 (Observer) Advanced Flying Unit at Millom in Cumbria in June 1943. There navigators and wireless operators/air gunners were put through intensive training, both in the classroom and in the air, in Avro Ansons, on a series of cross country and navigational training exercises. Later came bombing exercises with dummy munitions, all under the careful scrutiny of 2 AFU’s seasoned instructors. In less than three weeks, Sgt Lewis notched up almost 29 hours’ flying time, most of it by day, on these exercises. By a strange quirk of fortune, one of his pilots on these exercises was F/Sgt Clem Koder, who was later to fly as a flight lieutenant with 625 Squadron at Kelstern and would become a founder member of the post war Squadron Association.
P/O Jeff Smith and crew pictured with some of their ground crew after they completed their tour. Note the ‘S’ on the wheel chock, denoting their aircraft, S-Sugar. (625 Squadron Association)
The next big step came when he was posted to 26 Operational Training Unit at Wing, near Leighton Buzzard, in August 1943 and it was here that most of the crew he was to fly with operationally came together. Over the next few weeks he was to fly in Wellingtons with a variety of pilots but one name, that of P/O Jeff Smith, began to appear with increasing regularity. ‘Crewing-up’ was an ad hoc system which worked very well, men being told to report to a certain hangar and sort themselves out into crews. Apart from P/O Smith, Sgt Lewis found himself alongside Sgts Yates (bomb-aimer) Webb and Thomas (gunners) and P/O Bancroft (navigator) and the seemingly never-ending series of circuits and landings recorded in his log book eventually began to expand into bombing, navigational and cross country exercises of ever-increasing duration. By now, P/O Smith’s crew, minus its flight engineer, Sgt North, who would join later, was becoming a cohesive unit, learning to work together as well as beginning to forms bonds of friendship which, in many cases, would extend for years to come.
They flew almost daily, serving with 26 OTU’s A, B and D Flights until they had completed their course on November 11, 1943, amassing 93 hours and 15 minutes of daylight flying and 44 important hours of night exercises.
P/O Smith’s crew then went on leave, spending Christmas 1943 with their family and friends, before reporting to 1651 Heavy Conversion Unit at Wrattling Common in Cambridgeshire in mid-January, 1944. This was a conversion unit which served 3 Group and there they were to fly Stirlings on a series of night and day exercises, inevitably including hours of circuits and landings and the standard cross-country, bombing and air-firing exercises. Then, at the end of their two-month course, they were told them would be moving north to join 1 Group.
The crew took the train to Lincoln where they were picked up and driven to Hemswell where they were to be finally introduced to the Lancaster at 1 Group’s Lancaster Finishing School. Their time at 1 LFS was to be brief: on their first day they were taken for a one-hour familiarisation flight by one of the senior instructors, S/Ldr Tuckwell, and, after Wellingtons and Stirlings, the Lancaster must have seemed a delight to them all. Solo circuits followed dual circuits, both by day and night, including three flights from Binbrook to help ease the pressure at Hemswell.
Then, finally, after two years training, Sgt Lewis was finally posted along with his crew to his first and only operational squadron, 625 at Kelstern. The crew arrived there on March 22, 1944 and were assigned to B Flight. Their first task was to be yet more circuits and landings and cross-country exercises over the next two days before three of the crew – P/O Smith, Keith Lewis and their mid-upper, Sgt Webb - found themselves down for their first operation on the night of March 24, just two days after arriving. They went together to the briefing room and sat in near darkness as the curtain was finally drawn back on their first target – Berlin. They were to fly as part of an eight-man crew that night with an experienced man in the pilot’s seat, F/Lt Blackmore, while P/O Smith went along as the ‘second dickey’, to watch and learn. They took off from Kelstern at 18.30 as part of a force of 577 Lancasters, 216 Halifaxes and 18 Mosquitoes for what would be the final attack in what had become known as the Battle of Berlin. The raid itself was something of a failure for Bomber Command, strong winds scattering the markers and much of the bombing being spread over a wide area, some of it outside the city. Seventy-two aircraft, almost nine per cent of those sent, failed to return. Three of them were from 625 Squadron. Lancaster ND639 with P/O Smith’s crew on board made it back at 1.50am on March 25. Sgt Lewis’s log book simply states ‘Berlin – Successful’, though that probably referred to their safe return rather than the effectiveness of the attack.
They were not to fly operationally again for 16 days but were kept busy flying another cross-country exercise and taking part in a signals exercise during which they landed their Lancaster at the fighter airfield at Hibaldstow, near Brigg, one of the few four-engined aircraft to ever touch down there.
On April 9 they flew together as a seven-man crew on operations for the first time, taking part in a successful raid on the rail yards at Villeneuve St Georges, near Paris, a five hour 40 minute round trip from Kelstern. This attack marked the start of an intensive period of raids on communication targets in France prior to the coming invasion. The following day they went to Rouen, before a series of attacks on German targets, Cologne, Düsseldorf, Karlsruhe, Essen and Friedrichshafen, before hitting an ammunition dump at Maintenon in Northern France in an entirely 1 Group operation led the group’s own target marking flight.
After a week’s leave – during which they were fortunate to miss the debâcle of Mailly-le-Camp in which 625 lost another three aircraft – P/O Smith’s crew were back at Kelstern to take part in an attack on the coastal battery at Merville. The next night they went to Dieppe and 24 hours later attacked the rail yards at Hasselt.
Despite the pace of the bomber war, they were still expected to fit in training flights, including fighter affiliation exercises and flying a couple of times on extended air tests with the squadron’s commanding officer, W/Cmdr Haig. They got their first and, as it proved, only experience of mine-laying with a ‘gardening’ operation to Kiel Bay, returning to Kelstern with ‘flak holes’ according to the log book.
With their skipper now promoted to flight lieutenant they were already half way through their tour in only a few weeks and flew to Germany twice more, to Duisburg and Dortmund, before taking part in a devastating attack on the marshalling yards at Tergnier.
For the night of June 5, 1944 Keith Lewis’s log book records ‘Grisbeck – opening attack of Continental invasion’. His crew were back at Kelstern after four hours and five minutes in the air, taking part in the largest single Allied operation of the war. No aircraft were lost from Kelstern that night and there must have been some smiling faces at the debriefing. The end, they must have thought, was now coming into sight.
The newly promoted F/Lt Smith’s crew took part in successful attacks on Vire and the road junction at Forêt de Cerisy on the following two nights before a four-day break. Then it was their first daylight attack (marked in green ink in the log book) on Le Havre, their ai
rcraft landing at Ludford on its return. They took part in their first attack on a V1 site in the Pas de Calais on June 16 before another eight day break followed by successive daylight attacks on two further rocket sites as the flying bomb menace to the south of England grew.
By now they were among 625’s most experienced crews and they carried out further attacks on Vaires on June 27, followed by Vierzon two nights later, a daylight raid on Neuville, Tours on July 12 and Revigny two nights later. This relatively short-range operation saw the crew in the air for almost nine and a half hours as crews were ordered to circle before finally being told not to bomb. To add to their misery they had to divert to Witchford in Cambridgeshire, flying back to Kelstern the following day.
By now they had 29 operations under their belt and their operational finale was to prove to be a gruelling one. At midnight on July 18 the crews were roused and by 03.35am F/Lt Smith’s crew took off to take part in an attack by 942 Bomber Command aircraft on German troop concentrations around Caen as part of Operation Goodwood, Montgomery’s attempt to break out of the Normandy beach head. They were back at Kelstern by 7am and then, after debriefing and breakfast, it was back to bed for the 625 Squadron crews before they were roused again for an attack that night on Gelsenkirchen. Smith’s weary crew took off at 10.45pm and were back from their trip to the Ruhr shortly after 3am on July 19. Their tour was finally over.
In 31 operations from Kelstern they flew operationally for 136 hours and 20 minutes by night and 16 hours and 40 minutes by day, non-operationally for four hours by night and 43 hours and 10 minutes by day, a total of 387 hours and 10 minutes flying time with the squadron.
The crew was now simply broken up and each member went their separate way. The following month saw Keith Lewis as a wireless operator instructor at 1662 Heavy Conversion Unit at Blyton where he was to fly four times in Halifaxes.
He was later sent to St Athan where he qualified as a signals leader and in August 1945 joined 1667 HCU at Sandtoft where he flew again several times in Lancasters, including two low level ‘Cook’s tours’ trips over Holland and Germany, taking ground crew to see for themselves the result of Bomber Command’s operations against cities such as Bremen Essen, Dortmund and Krefeld. It proved to be a sobering experience for all to see in broad daylight the devastation of Germany’s industrial cities.
Keith Lewis was later posted to India and Hong Kong before finally leaving the Royal Air Force. He was later among the founder members of the 625 Squadron Association. Today his son, Nic, is the secretary of the association, keeping alive the memories of all those who served at Kelstern.
Chapter 16
A Long Hot Summer
Invasion, Flying Bombs and the
Luckiest Man Alive
At 24 minutes past eleven on the night of June 5, 1944 Lancaster LL811, J-Jig of 550 Squadron, from North Killingholme, dropped its load of 14 thousand pounds bombs on a gun battery overlooking the Normandy coast. It was to be the opening salvo of Operation Overlord, the greatest amphibious operation in military history.
Aircraft from 550 and other 1 Group squadrons were in the first wave of bombers which attacked defences along the French coast only hours before the landing craft began arriving on the five invasion beaches. J-Jig, known as Bad Penny II, made it safely back to North Killingholme along with W/O Bowen and crew after writing its own scrap of history, something which was to be recognised over 40 years later when the crew was awarded a collective Croix de Guerre by the French Government. They all survived the war, as did Bad Penny II only to crash while being used for training at Lindholme. The invasion marked both a turning point on land and in the fortunes of air crew in Bomber Command. There were some bad days and nights ahead for the Lancaster crews in 1 Group and the next few weeks would see some of the most intensive bombing of the entire war, but from D-Day onwards their chances of surviving a tour of operations began to increase rapidly.
Wickenby WAAF Intelligence officer Jean Noden at the debriefing following a 1 Group attack on a flying bomb site in August 1944. (Wickenby Archive)
Celebrating returning from 625 Squadron’s 1000th sortie, ‘Kelsey’s Kelstern Kids’, summer 1944. (625 Squadron Association)
From the beginning of June Bomber Command was being used almost exclusively to pound coastal defences and lines of communications, not all in the Normandy area as it was essential to keep the Germans guessing exactly where the Allies would land. Among the targets was the radar station at Berneval, near Dieppe which was completely destroyed in a precision attack by over 100 1 Group Lancasters. The only aircraft which failed to make it home was P/O Bill Kay’s from 100 Squadron, which hit a building at Waltham on take off, wrecking the undercarriage. After using up as much fuel as possible and dumping the bombs it later crash-landed on the extra-long emergency runway at Woodbridge. 1 Group’s only loss due to enemy action in a series of intensive operations before D-Day was P/O Geoffrey Jones’s Lancaster which was shot down by flak while attacking batteries near Calais. There were no survivors.
One of the key roles on the eve of D-Day in the huge operation to mislead the Germans went to 101 Squadron at Ludford. Its entire complement of 24 ABC-equipped aircraft was sent to patrol the invasion area to disrupt night-fighter communications and it was from this operation that 1 Group suffered its only loss, P/O Steele’s aircraft suffering an engine failure and ditching in the Channel where the crew were quickly picked up by a Royal Navy destroyer. 101’s role was to fly on a route from Beachy Head, across the Channel to Northern France, then on a line along the route of the Somme river before turning towards Paris and then follow the Seine back to the coast. Apart from jamming any fighter signals, they were also tasked with dropping copious amounts of Window to further confuse the Germans. At the end of their seven hour operation, the 23 surviving aircraft returned to Ludford and it was only once they were on the ground they were told the significance of the night’s operation.
F/O B. Windrim DFC and crew pose on the wing of their Lancaster, Y2, at Kelstern 1944. Other members of the crew were F/Sgt J. Platt, flight engineer, F/O W. Porter, navigator, F/Sgt F. Tolley, bomb aimer, Sgt D. Steen, wireless operator, Sgt G. Simmonds, mid-upper gunner and Sgt J. Slater, rear gunner. (625 Squadron Association)
June 1944 at Ludford. The air and ground crew of ME837 which was delivered to 101 Squadron as an ABC-equipped Lancaster that month and was to spend the next nine months at Ludford. It was scrapped in October 1945. (P. Holway)
Bad Penny II, the 550 Squadron Lancaster credited with dropping the first bombs on D-Day. (Author’s collection)
A non-ABC Lancaster of 101 Squadron, pictured on a daylight raid over France, June 1944. (Vic Redfern)
Once the landings had taken place Bomber Command’s attention switched to destroying lines of communications, and particularly targets like rail junctions and marshalling yards. Achères, on the outskirts of Paris, was one target assigned to 1 Group. It was hit on the night of June 6-7 and again four nights later. In the first attack just one aircraft was lost, one from 550 Squadron flown by P/O Michael Shervington. There were no survivors. The second attack on Achères was to prove much more costly with 1 Group losing seven Lancasters, two of them from 100 Squadron. One came down in the target area while the second, flown by P/O Harry Skinner, was badly shot up by a night fighter and headed for the coast where, once over the Allied beach-head, the pilot ordered the crew to bail out. The bomb aimer, P/O Richard Carroll, had lost his parachute in the attack and P/O Skinner told him to hold on to him and they jumped together, only for the unfortunate bomb aimer to lose his grip and fall to his death in the sea. The pilot, rear gunner, navigator and bomb aimer all landed in the sea but made it ashore to find themselves in American hands and later returned to Waltham along with the pilot and rear gunner. The bodies of flight engineer, Sgts Ray Bott, and Richard Carroll were never found.
The air and ground crew of 100 Squadron’s L-Love pictured at Waltham, July 1944. This aircraft was lost with a different crew when
it crashed into the sea while using a bombing range in The Wash in January 1945. (Author’s collection)
S/Ldr Dave Robb RCAF (standing, second left) and crew of M-Mother of 100 Squadron at Waltham, 1944. (Arthur White)
Pauillac oil refinery on the Gironde estuary in France takes a pounding, August 4, 1944. This photograph was taken from F/Lt Marsden’s 103 Squadron Lancaster from 7,500 feet. (Elsham Wolds Association)
Pilot Ivan Warmington (standing) and navigator John Clark in front of their 166 Squadron aircraft prior to an attack on the oil refinery at Sterkrade in the Ruhr, Kirmington June 16, 1944. (J. F. Clark)
F/O Ian Smith and crew, 100 Squadron June 1944. They are (left to right) F/O Smith, flight engineer Sgt J. Walsh, navigator F/Sgt M. Paff RAAF, bomb-aimer F/Sgt R. Gordon RAAF, wireless operator Sgt D.S. Sykes, mid-upper gunner Sgt D. Waters and rear gunner Sgt H.J. Taylor. One of the airfield’s hangars is visible on the extreme right. (Harry Taylor)
That same raid also cost 625 Squadron three aircraft. There were no survivors from the crews of F/O Alfred Malin and P/O Jim Dudman but five of those in the third aircraft, flown by F/O Geeson, made it back to England. With the Allies now ashore the chances of escape for those who survived increased dramatically and over the next few months hundreds of downed Bomber Command aircrew made it back to their own lines, often aided by the French Resistance and by groups of SAS soldiers dropped behind German lines to organise sabotage and disrupt communications.
1 Group Page 22