As the little dog’s extended family of fleas set to work above our socklines, Neumann explained his involvement in establishing the museum after the Russians departed in 1990 in those aircraft that still flew. Job prospects since die Wende – the changes following Germany’s unification in 1990 – have been thin for people of his generation in this and many other parts of the former East Germany, so he and some friends had put much of their time into this project. He led us through the display rooms – mainly models of the aircraft developed there during the war, but also remnants of aircraft, uniforms, rescue equipment and a small room furnished to show the typical barracks accommodation of a Luftwaffe officer.
I asked the origin of the photo pinned to the doorway showing a handsome young airman. The pilot, here sporting a shiny, black flying jacket and liquorice-whip hairdo, had landed briefly at Rechlin-Lärz in the closing days of the war to reload bombs for his single-engine Focke-Wulf fighter before taking off to attack a river crossing established by Russian soldiers. The pilot had survived the war and settled in Hamburg. Could this, I wondered, be my way into finding out what it was like to be on the other side, taking off each night to stop people like Col Jones dropping their bombs?
My curiosity pricked, I emailed the curator asking if I could contact the elderly former pilot and attaching a translation of the letter Col’s mother, Emma Jones, received informing her of the circumstances surrounding his death. Neumann promised to make some inquiries. His reply came back two weeks later, saying the pilot had died some weeks before. But he put me in contact with Wilhelm Goebel, a former colonel in the post-war German air force. Goebel co-ordinated Jägerkreis, a networking circle of former German airmen, and published a bi-monthly bulletin called Flieger Blatt.
I left a message for Goebel, which he returned one Saturday morning as I watched my daughter’s soccer match from the sideline. Two senior US army officers attached to their embassy in Berlin – fellow soccer dads – stood at my side; they must have wondered about the nature of the conversation. I told Goebel of my search for information about the fate of Col’s bomber. I also wanted to talk to some of the former Luftwaffe airmen who might provide some perspective from the opposing side. Goebel offered to place a small notice in his publication if I could send through what we knew about the circumstances surrounding Col’s death. He then gave me Professor Fries’s name and number, plus a contact for the Berlin Jägerkreis chapter.
I contacted Professor Fries early in 2007. Over the phone his voice was high-pitched, obviously elderly, but what struck me more was its warmth and his immediate invitation to me to come and talk. He gave me precise directions and I set off one dark and misty March evening for his home in south-west Berlin. The hand I shook had spent a few years flying deadly machines and then years designing buildings, including his own house. It was soft and slightly clawed by arthritis. At 89, Otto-Heinrich Fries was a little stooped and moved stiffly. Yet once we sat in the companionable glow of a standard lamp and settled into the soft lounge furniture, with Irmgard Fries offering nibbles and wine from the vineyards of her husband’s childhood home, the still-sharp mind of one of Hitler’s élite airmen began to reveal its secrets, and with astonishing recall. I knew immediately I had found one path to the past. Would it cross my great-uncle’s?
CHAPTER 2
DITCHING
The episode that hooked me and made me want to find out more came halfway through Col’s first tour of operations. By his 16th op, Col had already had some narrow escapes, but nothing compared with what happened coming back from bombing Essen in the early hours of 6 June 1942. As events unfolded, the crew’s chances of survival seemed to get steadily worse. That most of them made it home to fight another night is a story not only of skill and determination but also of tremendous luck – luck that had an echo 66 years later as I tried to track down those involved. As if the dead had returned to discuss a shared adventure, I found a recording of Col’s skipper for that trip recounting the dramatic episode soon afterwards in a BBC radio broadcast, supporting Col’s vivid, written description almost blow for blow. And my search also took me down a path to another of his former crewmates, still alive, who had played another part in trying to ensure their survival.
Col’s ill-fated op to Essen on 5–6 June 1942 was the third time he had bombed a city that was to suffer 272 such bombing raids during the war.[1] Lying in the industrial belt of the Ruhr River valley, north-east of Cologne, Essen was within easy range of Bomber Command. Bomber crews called this unfortunate strip ‘Happy Valley’ because they returned to pound it so often. Col’s adventure began when he took off at five minutes to midnight as a fill-in navigator on 149 Squadron Stirling OJ-‘T’ Tommy. His diary describes what happened that night.
This was an epic and a tragic trip. Essen again and coming back shot to pieces, lost the rear gunner, collided with a Wellington, shot up by a fighter, went down in the sea and none the worse. Funny thing, I was not down to fly and just went across to tell Mac [McKiner, Squadron Navigation Officer] that I was going for a swim. But he said that they were two navigators short and would I fly with either Tony Ballauff or Eric Whitney and I said Eric. So it was arranged. The crew was: Eric Whitney [pilot], then a Flight Sergeant, but commissioned soon after; Paddy Martin wireless operator/air gunner; me; Bob Shields engineer; Geoff Cheek wireless operator; no mid-upper [gunner] and Keith Roderick in the rear.
Curiously enough, when we compared notes subsequently, we all admitted to a premonition that it was going to be a ‘shaky do’. The first thing was that we swung on take-off and landed up in a bunker. Got her back on the runway. Undercart found to be all right, so we started again. No trouble. Paddy Martin map read us across Germany and we saw Duisburg in the moonlight – saw the docks.
Got to the target – pretty hot, too; and just as we were weaving in, before we had dropped our load (incendiaries) they hit us. However, we coped and turned on the southern route for home. Bloody Gee box [navigation device] packed in so we were just making a general direction, aided by the occasional ropey loop.[2]
Just about somewhere near Antwerp it all started and everything happened at once. Out of the blue a terrific crash followed hard after by another. Direct hits by flak. Flying controls affected. At that stage Geoff was in the mid-upper watching for fighters. When the excitement of the crash had passed he told us that simultaneously with being hit by flak, a Wellington [RAF twin-engined bomber, nicknamed ‘Wimpy’] had dived out of control and hit us at the rear with an engine. Personally, I think we were more likely to have been hit by a wingtip, but he says he is sure, so there it is.
Then we were hit again, and the combined result of the collision and the flak almost buggered the flying controls completely. In a quiet interval(?), Geoff made his way down to the rear of the kite to see what had happened to ‘Moonbeam’ Keith, because there was no answer on the intercom. He had to pick his way over the holes in the floor of the fuselage – they gaped everywhere. In the dark he fell into the space for the mid-under [ventral turret, not installed]. The blast of the flak had forced the doors open and he thought he had gone right through. That is one of the worst experiences I think I have ever heard. When he picked himself out of there, he fell over the flare chutes. Then he looked for Keith – and all he saw was a great gaping hole in the rear of the kite. The turret had completely disappeared. Poor old Keith must have gone with it. Still, he would never have known what hit him, because Geoff said the Wimpy came down from above.
After that I don’t know how many times we were hit by flak. To make matters worse, we discovered that the flak had caused fires in the bomb doors. We managed to put them out, with a small fire extinguisher, or perhaps they went out themselves. Anyway there was no sign of flame and no smell of smoke. Then we received two more direct hits by flak, one shell burst inside the kite about two-thirds of the way down the fuselage and another in the bomb aimer’s position. That one wrecked the front turret, in which fortunately no-one was sitting at the time. Som
ewhere about this time, Eric ordered us all forward to try and keep the nose of the machine down. It wanted to climb, having no fore and aft stability, but did not have the speed. We were staggering along at between 95 mph and 105 mph – a few miles an hour above stalling speed – and that is a fact. When I looked at my air speed indicator I thought it had been put out of action when it read that, but then I noticed Eric’s read the same.
We threw out everything moveable – spare ammo; the navigator’s chair, hoping it might hit something on the ground (even his cushion, which was silly); we tried to get the gas [cylinders] out, but they were jammed and shot away so that they would not shift. Only Geoff was aft of the armour plating door, and he was protected by his own armour plating. I think the fact that we all had that protection saved us from what came next.
We were attacked by a fighter – a twin-engined machine. I shall always associate the noise of ripping silk with fighter attacks, because that is what the noise of the bullets hitting the fuselage sounds like. The fighter made three attacks, one from behind, one from underneath and one from behind and slightly to the side. We had no guns to fight back with because the rear turret had gone, the front turret was useless and the mid-upper would not operate because the oil feed had been broken and the guns would not fire. God knows why someone was not hit. For some reason the fighter then left us. Why the fighter did not carry on his good work, God only knows, because we could do nothing; we could not return his fire; could not do evasive action; only climb and stall, climb and stall. I don’t know why. No-one knows why, but there were no more attacks. By that time we were just about 10,000 feet and wondering what was going to come next.
The skipper’s radio account describes how he experienced the same sequence of events up to this point. Finding the recording was one of those strokes of luck that makes me believe in a guiding hand. While researching this book, in May 2008 I visited a Lincolnshire airbase where I bought a CD containing short BBC broadcasts made during the war, of Royal Air Force (RAF) bomber crew recounting hair-raising experiences.[3] When I slipped it into the car’s player as I drove south, I could scarcely believe what I was hearing: the voice of Pilot Eric Whitney, on 18 June 1942, describing how, 12 nights before he, navigator Col Jones and their crew had ditched in the Channel. Having worked in radio, I knew what I had found was pure gold. What he was saying was valuable enough, but actually hearing him recount it was even more precious: it was as if the past had flagged down my car and got into the seat beside me. On the four-minute recording Whitney’s reading is stilted and he stumbles at each page-turn, but the essential character of this 23-year-old, who had shown such extraordinary skill and leadership in saving himself and his crew, comes through strongly. What struck me was the modesty of his young voice which, from its unperturbed tone, might have been describing missing a bus. Even on paper, his account of what happened is still vivid after all these years and matches Col’s in even the smallest of details:
The first thing was a terrific jolt. There were two bursts of flak right under the front gunner’s feet. He went down into the bomb aimer’s compartment and found it in a mess. There were two big holes and a small fire burning. The front gunner grabbed the fire extinguisher and put the flames out quick. What happened next came in such a rush that it’s difficult to know in what order it all occurred. The nose of the aircraft went up. The wireless operator told me that he thought we had been hit by an enemy aircraft diving out of control, which had struck our rear turret. I sent everyone into the nose of the aircraft to keep it down. I got no reply when I called up the rear gunner, so I sent the wireless operator back to see what had happened to him. He told me that the whole of the rear turret had gone. He looked straight through the hole where the turret had been and saw an enemy fighter coming up to attack; he told me so. It wasn’t too good, because we couldn’t take any evasive action. We had been knocked about too much for that. There was a rattle like hail and cannon shells ricocheted off the fuselage in every direction. The enemy made three attacks in all. Cannon shells burst along the whole length of the fuselage, inside and out. The front turret and the mid-upper turret were both put out of action, so we had nothing to hit back with. But then the night fighter left us; I suppose he had used up all his ammunition.
Most of our flying controls were shot away, so there wasn’t much I could do with the aircraft and practically all I had left were the four engines and – as the last resort – the dinghy. But all the time the wireless operator was signalling base. I headed out to sea, steadily losing height. I put it up to the crew whether to bale out over enemy territory or paddle home. They were all for paddling. The navigator kept on working out our position right up to the last moment, so that when we did hit the sea we could send off a message with our exact position in it. I’m sure that this is one of the things that saved our lives.
Col’s account of the few minutes before impact continues:
When afterwards we looked at the rear of the armour plating, it was pitted and dented, while the fuselage looked like a colander. All this time I had been struggling to make Gee [navigation device] go; no joy at all, right from the target. Eric asked me where we were, and I told him we were over the coast. That was a line, but what was the use of adding to his difficulties? I knew we were a good 10 miles inside Holland. At this stage, after the attack by the fighter, we had no flying controls at all, only the four engines, which by the mercy of God were not hit at all. Eric asked us if we wanted to bale out, but Paddy Martin replied for all of us when he said ‘bugger that. Home for us.’ Then we saw the coast coming up and got hit again. We were all cooped up in the relatively confined space between the armour-plating doors and the pilots’ seats; and I know that for my part I was just waiting for the floor under us to be hit. For some strange reason it wasn’t, though it was literally the only part that wasn’t.
We crossed the coast and Eric thought that possibly we might make England and bale out there. We were all in favour of that. If only we could make England, baling out would be nothing. But we didn’t. The compasses had been shot away, but for some strange reason the repeaters [compass indicators] still jerked around. When Eric saw that movement, he followed his repeater. It led him round in a circle. We flew over the enemy coast again. I did not notice because I was desperately trying to get the [Gee, radio position-fixing] box to go, our need of it was so great. But I looked up and there, the moon was ahead of us, instead of being behind – Eric noticed it at the same time, so out we went to sea again. We had barely made the complete circle before we noticed, but each mile was precious. I can remember the pilot calling to himself, or to the machine, ‘come on Tommy,’ (the machine was T for Tommy) ‘you have never let me down before. Don’t let me down now.’
The time has come to say something about Geoff [wireless operator]. I don’t think a man deserved a gong [medal] more. When we were struck by the Wimpy, Geoff was in the mid-upper and was thrown violently against the top of the turret, receiving bad concussion. He was also wounded in the arm by shrapnel. But throughout, he coped. His set was broken; his trailing aerial was shot away. He mended one and replaced the other. From the time he was told to send out an S.O.S. and get a fix from Hull, he stuck to his set. He not only got a fix, carried out the necessary S.O.S. procedure, but he sent the full account of our adventures. He never weakened.
Just about the time that Geoff got his fix the Gee picked up again. And I managed to get a fix, but the set was spasmodic – had been, in fact, all the way from the target. Moreover, I think that the set was damaged in some way in the battering we received. None the less, the fix I got agreed to within eight miles of the fix Geoff got, so they more or less tallied. When we had got some 12-20 miles out to sea, and the kite was simply staggering through the sky, Eric finally decided that we could not make it. He told us he would have to come down in the sea. That the machine could have flown in that condition was a miracle. The only thing that was not shot up were the four engines. The pilot had to fly the half-out-
of-control, 23-ton machine solely by the throttles. He had no other controls – they had all gone – and he brought her down in the sea like that. He will get a DFM [Distinguished Flying Medal] for it as sure as God made little apples. He is only 23 years old, but no-one could have done a better job.
Curiously enough, I was more relieved than anything else. It seemed an end from one period of uncertainty and terrific tension, after which anything was a relief, and a welcome relief. As soon as Eric had made his decision, the crew went to work. It was good crew drill and each man knew exactly what to do. I can say that with more force, as I was not a regular member of the crew, Maurice White (afterwards Squadron Bombing Leader at Lakenheath) was the regular navigator. The pilots’ escape hatch [in the cockpit canopy, above the pilot’s seat] was opened by Paddy Martin, or Bob Shields, I am not sure which; Paddy opened the top escape hatch [just behind the aerial mast, aft of the cockpit] and got the ladder down. Both Paddy and I made sure that the front escape hatch [just behind the bomb aimer’s position on the ‘chin’ of the aircraft] was closed properly – bloody necessary, because if that were forced open the nose would not rise again if the kite did not land level – and either Paddy or I opened the astrodome [mid-ships, above the wings].
Under a Bomber's Moon: The true story of two airmen at war over Germany Page 2