1 Group

by Patrick Otter

  Mad buggers they may have been, but they were true warriors of the bomber war.

  End of the line for a 300 Squadron veteran. (Z. Bednarski)

  Chapter 20

  Daylight at Last

  1945: The Final 124 Days of Hostilities

  The final year of the war dawned with high expectations and heavy snow blanketing Lincolnshire’s airfields. Those final four months were also to see the heaviest bombing of the war and the lightest casualties amongst aircrew, despite 1 Group losing 24 aircraft in a single night. It was to witness the controversy of Dresden and the compassion of the food drops to the starving population of Holland and was a period which saw 1 Group reach the peak of its powers with 368 Lancasters on its strength, the highest number in Bomber Command, but paradoxically with fewer and fewer targets to attack. Ironically one of the final tasks many bomber crews were to undertake before demobilisation was dumping unused bombs in the sea.

  Victory always seemed so close at hand in those closing months yet the resilience and tenacity of the Germans, the rigors of the weather and the vulnerability of their aircraft took their toll on the Lancasters and men of 1 Group. Among the first losses of the year was a 100 Squadron Lancaster with New Zealander F/Lt Verrell Weatherley at the controls which inexplicably plunged into The Wash during a bombing exercise, taking with it the pilot and his five-man crew. A couple of days later P/O Christopher Weight was killed along with the other five men on board a 103 Squadron Lancaster which crashed into the Humber in a blizzard.

  Despite the awful weather which had led to the cancellation of a raid on New Year’s Day, 1 Group Lancasters went to Nuremburg on the night of January 2 and lost six aircraft with two more being involved in a collision over Subrooke, near Lincoln on their return. There were no survivors from the 150 Squadron crew of F/O Geoffrey Russell and the 153 Squadron Lancaster of F/O Daniel Reid, one of five Canadians in the crew. Two others were lost from 100 and 300 Squadrons while the other three were from 166 Squadron. P/O Richard Chittim’s aircraft was hit by flak near Nancy and only the rear gunner survived while P/O Stephen Buck and five of his crew parachuted to safety over the Allied lines after being shot down, the rear gunner, Sgt Ned Baker, being killed when he struck the tailplane. There were no survivors from the third 166 Lancaster, which was again hit by anti-aircraft fire. The pilot was 30-year-old F/O Henry Burgoyne from New Cumnock in Ayreshire. He had joined the Metropolitan Police before the war and during the London Blitz won a George Medal together with Pc John James for rescuing a number of people from a collapsed block of flats in Marylebone, the two police officers at one time supporting part of a collapsed roof with their backs while a man and an unconscious woman were pulled out. Pc Burgoyne was already a member of the RAFVR and later trained as a pilot and arrived with his crew at Kirmington in the autumn of 1944. They were shot down on their 20th operation.

  Smiling faces at Wickenby in the spring of 1945. Among the 626 Squadron personnel identified are ‘Fish’, Beryl, Alan, wireless operator A. Lloyd, Kath, air gunner E. Duncan, Athel, D. Tucker, Charlie, T. Martinez, Dennis, Arthur, Franks, flight engineer D. Butler, ‘Red’ Livingstone, Scottie, Geoff and Wes. (Wickenby Archive)

  Heavy snow blanketed the area over the next few days but it barely affected operations. Wickenby and Kirmington were among the stations where all nonessential personnel were put on snow clearing operations after a blizzard swept across Lincolnshire on January 7. They worked in shifts to clear the main runways, being supplied with hot soup and tea every half hour. After clearing the runways they watched as Lancasters left for an attack on Munich and then had to start all over again to keep the runways clear for the bombers’ return. Conditions at Elsham were so bad that snow was accumulating inside the hangars, blown through cracks in the walls. There, as at Binbrook, Ludford and Kelstern, conditions were considerably worse than on the airfields at lower altitudes. At one stage drifts around Binbrook were reported to be 21 feet high.

  The raid on Munich, the last for over a week because of the weather, cost 1 Group nine aircraft, one of them a 626 Squadron Lancaster from Wickenby which collided with a 150 Squadron Lancaster over France. The pilot, F/O Bob Smith, was killed along with his rear gunner, Sgt Bill McLean, while the 150 Squadron aircraft returned safely to Hemswell. Collisions and strikes from ‘friendly’ bombs were now almost as much of a hazard as the German defenders in the crowded skies over Europe. Another 1 Group Lancaster involved in a collision that night was O-Oboe of 460 Squadron, flown by F/O Art Whitmarsh, whose crew Hughie Edwards had accompanied on their first operation and his last from Binbrook. They were outbound over the Vosges mountains and were climbing through clouds when they hit another Lancaster. Their aircraft fell back into the clouds in a spin and it took the entire pilot’s strength to regain control. A quick inspection of the aircraft revealed that the trailing edge of the port wing was badly damaged, the aileron and wing tip were missing and much of the bottom of the fuselage had been torn away along with the H2S assembly. The mid-upper gunner, Sgt Ken de la Mare, used a rope to escape from his position into the relative safety of the front of the aircraft but the rear gunner, Sgt Dave Fellowes, was trapped inside his turret, which was vibrating fiercely but he declined an offer to bail out and opted to trust Whitmarsh to get the bomber home. After jettisoning their bombs, they were ordered to make for the emergency airfield at Manston where they made a safe landing. The following morning they walked through the snow at Manston to inspect O-Oboe. ‘It wasn’t a pretty sight,’ Sgt Fellowes was later to recall. They were given rail warrants to return to Binbrook only to be stopped on the journey back by RAF service police and admonished for being ‘incorrectly dressed’. It was later reported that the police personnel involved learned some new Australian phrases relating to their ancestry!

  626 lost a second aircraft during the raid, F/O Ken Stroh’s Lancaster being shot down near the target. Wickenby, like most other bomber airfields, was a very multinational place in 1945. Of the two Lancasters lost that night, 10 of those on board were Canadians and one Australian. There were five Canadians lost in F/O Charles Clarke’s 550 Squadron crew while the 19-year-old wireless operator, Sgt Lois Precieux, was from Mauritius. There were also five Canadians in F/O Edward Saslove’s Lancaster from 576 Squadron at Fiskerton which was lost with three of its crew and six Canadians in one of two 103 Squadron aircraft which failed to return to Elsham. Another six Canadians died in F/O Walter Soper’s 166 Squadron crew while the pilots of the remaining two 1 Group aircraft lost, F/O Bob Hanbidge of 12 Squadron and F/O Norman Dunlop of 170 Squadron were both Australian.

  Nose art at Kelstern. Clockwise from the top left, Wee Wally Wallaby, We Drop ’Em, Joe’s Kite and Our Kid. (625 Squadron Association)

  The snow relented sufficiently to allow 1 Group to take part in a highly accurate attack on the synthetic oil plant at Leuna, near Leipzig on the night of January 14-15. Three 1 Group aircraft were lost on the raid, two of them from Wickenby. F/O John Murray and two of his crew from 12 Squadron survived after they fell victim to a night fighter while F/Lt Don Nelson was the only survivor from his 626 Squadron crew, which was on its 30th operation in an ex-300 Squadron Lancaster on its 41st trip. The third Lancaster to be shot down was F/O Herbert Hazell’s from 625 at Kelstern. Two other Lancasters, one from 300 Squadron and the second from 460, crashed on their return. A second plant in the same area at Zeitz was hit a few days later with the loss of six more 1 Group aircraft, one each from 100, 166, 300 and 153 Squadron and two from 12 Squadron with only 14 of the 42 men on board surviving. A seventh from 576 at Fiskerton was abandoned by its crew over Belgium. On the same night F/O Fred McGonigle’s 101 Squadron Lancaster was lost while supporting a 5 Group attack on the Brüx refinery in Czechoslovakia, 101’s first loss of 1945.

  Operations were limited for the rest of the month but 153 Squadron at Scampton continued to suffer. An attack on Duisburg cost the squadron two aircraft, those of F/Lt Alan Jones DFC and F/O Ken Winder, while another, flown by 32-year-ol
d F/Lt Owen Jones DFC was lost in an attack on Stuttgart. There were no survivors. The Stuttgart attack also saw 300 and 460 Squadron each lose a Lancaster. The pilot of the Faldingworth Lancaster was F/Lt Zigmund Zarebski, who had flown Spitfires and Hurricanes with the Polish Air Force in Britain before transferring to Bomber Command.

  February opened with another very bad night for 1 Group. The target was Ludwigshafen, just across the Rhine from Mannheim. Two 101 Squadron Lancasters collided over France, killing 14 of the 16 men on board. A third from the squadron, flown by New Zealander F/O Bob Clark was shot down near the target. F/Lt Francis Conn DFC, who was on his second tour, had left Waltham with two newcomers to 100 Squadron, F/O Bob Dukelow and his navigator F/O Geoff Blackbourn, going along for experience. All nine men on board were killed when they were shot down close to the Rhine. 166 Squadron lost three Lancasters on the raid, those of F/Lt Ed Spankie DFC and F/Lt Edward Pollock and their crews. The third aircraft, flown by F/O Mike Smithers, was attacked by a Ju88 which raked the Lancaster with cannon fire, killing four of the crew and wounding the pilot. After a second attack he managed to bail out together with his bomb aimer, Sgt Ray Storey, and flight engineer, Sgt Eric Bradshaw, and all three landed in the Black Forest. Later, when he was being interrogated, Smithers was astonished how well the Germans were informed about 166 Squadron, his captors even asking about the well-being of the Kirmington CO, G/Cpt Vivian, whose foot had been injured at particularly boisterous Christmas party! The final aircraft lost that night was a 550 Squadron Lancaster which collided with a Hemswell-bound 170 Squadron aircraft over France, killing two of the crew.

  Bombs away. A dramatic photograph taken from a 101 Squadron Lancaster during the daylight raid on Bremen on March 23, 1945. The aircraft directly below is also from 101 and, on the original, it is possible to make out the shadow of one of the ABC aerials falling across the fuselage. (Vic Redfern via Peter Green)

  The next victim of a mid-air collision was a Lancaster flown by the popular station commander at Binbrook, G/Cpt Keith Parsons. He had taken a new 460 crew on Bomber Command’s only attack of the war on the town of Wiesbaden. After leaving the target area his Lancaster collided with an aircraft from 626 Squadron at 19,000 feet, the collision sheering off the canopy just above his head and knocking out both port engines. His Lancaster rolled and went into a spin and he ordered the crew to jump. When the altimeter went past 7,000 feet G/Cpt Parsons realised he wasn’t going to have time to get out through the escape hatch so, breaking off chunks of Perspex with his hands, he climbed out through the shattered canopy and pushed himself out. ‘The spin on the aircraft was so tight that I actually stood on top of the canopy quite comfortably before giving one hell of a push and pulling the ripcord,’ he was later to recall. It was only when he reached the ground he realised his parachute had been torn as he made his escape and was about to collapse as he reached the ground. He was the only survivor from his aircraft while the only one casualty in the Wickenby Lancaster, was the rear gunner, Sgt Henry Norton, who died in the collision. A second Lancaster lost from 460 was flown by F/O John Maguire, a 21-year-old Australian who had only recently married a girl he met in Doncaster while at 1656 HCU at Lindholme. There was only one survivor from his crew. The three other 1 Group aircraft lost included one from 300 Squadron and two from Fiskerton, F/O Richard Sowerbutts and his crew being killed when their Lancaster crashed in Luxemburg. The second was abandoned when an engine caught fire over France and the crew landed safely.

  Oil targets were being hit with great frequency and accuracy and the next on the list was the Prosper benzol plant at Bottrop, near Gelsenkirchen. Luftwaffe night fighters accounted for several of the six 1 Group Lancasters lost, one each from 12, 100, 153, 170, 460 and 550 Squadrons, 33 men losing their lives. Military targets were also being hit and on the night of February 7-8 285 Lancasters from 1 and 8 Groups virtually destroyed the town of Kleve, close to the Rhine in support of a British attack on the town. So badly was Kleve bombed that military vehicles were held up by the mountains of rubble. It was an attack which was to cost 1 Group a single aircraft, that flown by F/Lt John Somerville and crew from 12 Squadron. Clem Koder, who completed 36 operations as a pilot with 625 Squadron at Kelstern, later remembered this as one of the operations his crew enjoyed best because they were told at their briefing that their bombing was intended to provide close support for Canadian troops and for the Durham Light Infantry.

  January 1945 at Kirmington. The 166 Squadron aircraft is one of those fitted with a Rose turret. (Peter Green Collection)

  W/O Lake and five members of his crew about to board their Lancaster at a muddy Kelstern prior to an air test. (625 Squadron Association)

  Dresden. The very word now unfairly haunts the memory of Bomber Command. Over the years it has been used to despoil and denigrate the achievements and sacrifices of all who served in the RAF’s bomber squadrons. In a single night a raid of the highest efficiency and accuracy provided the bombing campaign’s opponents and the post-war revisionists with exactly what they were looking for: civilian casualties and unnecessary destruction on an almost unimaginable scale.

  The raid took place on the night of February 13-14 and was part of the long-planned Operation Thunderclap, aimed at undermining the will of the German people in the closing stages of the war. Dresden was one of four cities selected as Thunderclap targets (the others were Chemnitz, Leipzig and Berlin, all close to the front line with the Russians). At the Yalta conference earlier in the month the Russians themselves had pushed for something on the scale of Thunderclap and the idea had been enthusiastically backed by Churchill. The Americans, too, were keen in the idea and were to follow up the RAF’s Dresden raid with a bombing attack of their own. In his latest history of the Second World War, historian Max Hastings maintains that the bombing was approved at a joint Western Allied Combined Chiefs of Staff meeting in Malta, held prior to the Yalta summit and adds: ‘The heavy bomber forces were directed to assault Germany’s transport infrastructure, including such rail centres as Dresden and Leipzig in the path of the Russian advance’ (author’s italics)

  Dresden was to be the first Thunderclap target and two separate raids were mounted by Bomber Command that night. The first, involving 5 Group, produced scattered bombing. The second, involving Lancasters of 1, 3, 6 and 8 Groups, came exactly one hour and 35 minutes after the first and was the one which was to obliterate the city, creating a firestorm killing perhaps as many as 50,000 people (although Hastings maintains the actual figure was around half that estimate). It had been purposely timed to catch fire crews and rescue workers out in the open. When they reached the city the master bomber, whose call sign on the night was King Cole, ordered crews to bomb visually on the fires started by 5 Group. Those towards the end of the stream simply dumped their bombs into the conflagration below, Lancasters rearing up in the turbulence caused by the overheated air over Dresden 20,000 feet below.

  F/O Windrim DFC (centre) and crew with their aircraft Y2 of 625 Squadron. (625 Squadron Association)

  Wickenby’s MT office staff, Sgt Munyard, F/O Corbette, Cpl Shaw, Anne Pew and Ivy Adams. (Wickenby Archive)

  An American raid the following day did little more than turn over the smouldering embers of the once-beautiful city of Dresden although, controversially, the B-17s’ long-range Mustang fighter escorts were ordered to strafe roads leading away from the city, killing many of those who had managed to escape the flames.

  There were many post-war theories about the choice of Dresden as a target, with the one suggesting it was a demonstration to the Russians of the might of Allied air power amongst the most widely used. But for the bomber crews who assembled in their briefing rooms in Lincolnshire on the afternoon of February 13 it was just another long-range attack on a German city. According to which briefing you listened to it was an ‘assembly point for the Russian front’, ‘a centre of lines of communication’, ‘an important evacuation area for government departments from Berlin’ or ‘a vital transport cent
re for troop movements’. Geoff Robinson was a flight engineer at Wickenby and recalled that at their briefing they were told the Russians had requested the raid because the Germans were using the city in which to mass troops ready for a counterattack. The success of the raid, they were told, could hasten the end of the war, something those who had been around Bomber Command had heard several times before. At the time few men on the squadron knew anything about Dresden or its history. It was just another target. Eric Thale, who flew with 625 Squadron that night, remembered the highly accurate marking of the target from 1,000ft by Bill Topper in his 5 Group Mosquito and the controlling of the attack by Maurice Smith, again of 5 Group. ‘It was so good that our master bomber merely told us to bomb the fires, and that’s what we did,’ he said.

  At Hemswell, crews from 150 and 170 Squadrons were briefed that the raid was in direct support of the rapidly-advancing Russian armies. The aircrew, however, were more aware that they faced a 10-hour operation at a time when the war was clearly nearing its end. Over at Binbrook, 460 crews regarded Dresden as just another target. They were told at their briefing the city was a major road and rail junction between the eastern and western fronts. Crews at North Killingholme, meanwhile, were briefed that the city contained vital industrial and communications targets.

  W/Cmdr Frank Powley (centre) CO of 153 Squadron, who was killed on a mining operation in March 1945. He had a premonition he would not return. Before joining 153, W/Cmdr Powley commanded 166 Squadron. (F. Fish)