‘Up a bit, a little to the left, distance 400,’ Fred coaxed him in.
Otto flipped the safety cover forward from the cannon release button on the top of the control stem. The teaspoon-like cover hinged forward onto the ‘shin’ of the control stem, to create a squeeze-trigger for the four 7.92-millimetre machine guns mounted in the upper nose.
‘A bit higher, just to the right, 300,’ said Fred.
Otto strained to make out a shape in the darkness, blinking hard and trying to distinguish the horizon. ‘Where is he exactly?’
‘Slightly to the right, slightly above us – you must see him – distance about 250.’
At that point Otto noticed a star snap into blackness and reappear. Then, a thumb’s-breadth above the horizon, he saw the shadow in front of him, as thin as a knife blade with five knots in it – the fuselage flanked by two engines on each side. Otto accelerated and could now make out the red glow of the exhaust flues and the twin tails of a Lancaster. ‘I see him!’
Then to ground control: ‘Parsival from Eagle 98 – I have contact’.
‘Viktor, understood – Weidmannsheil – happy hunting.’
The bomber hung unawares above the smaller fighter.
‘Why don’t you open fire?’ Fred cried.
‘Softly, softly.’ This time Otto was leaving nothing to chance, and focused his calmness as he stalked the bomber.
‘If you zoom past him this time I’ll clock your noggin with my flare pistol,’ Fred said. Out of the corner of his eye Otto could see his Bordfunker, seated behind him, brandishing the butt of his pistol. ‘Press the button, will you?’
‘Easy, easy! This time I want to get it exactly right!’
The Lancaster loomed like a whale emerging from the deep; Otto felt insignificant in his own Messerschmitt, lurking underneath it. He noted the time – 2.43a.m. – and radioed ground control: ‘Parsival from Eagle 98 – Pauke, Pauke! (drumbeat, I’m going in for the attack)’.
Slowly and with great care Otto eased back the joystick, lifting the ME110’s nose so that the vertical line of crosses on his gunsight slid across the wing area between the bomber’s two port engines. When the upper edge of the sighting circle was aligned with the Lancaster’s leading wing-edge, he opened fire as he continued to slide backwards, the stream of bullets and cannon shells raking fore to aft where the broadest part of the wing encased the main fuel tanks. The thunder and vibration of his own guns seemed to rattle the Messerschmitt to its core, and the cordite from the spent shells filled the cabin with a stench like fireworks.
Despite the temporary blinding by the muzzle flashes of four machine guns mounted in front of his windshield, he could see flames spring to life between the bomber’s port engines. His burst having lasted no more than two seconds, Otto flipped his machine to the right in the nick of time, watching the firefly-like tracer bullets from the Lancaster’s rear gun turret whip the darkness where he had been moments before. The bomber twisted downwards into the darkness, trailing a ghostly train of smoke. Otto dived after it and drew closer in the web of darkness so that the bomber was held again just above the faint corona of the horizon in his field of vision. He unleashed another burst into the seat of the flames and saw this bloom with greater intensity. Again Otto jinked off to the right but this time the rear gunner made no attempt to return fire.
‘Parsival from Eagle 98 – courier [the enemy] has had it!’
‘Viktor, understood!’
The bomber yawed and bucked in a futile attempt to shake its pursuer. A bomber trying to extinguish a fire faced enough of a challenge to hide in the absence of cloud cover; this one had no hope, since its wing had become a torch. Otto felt his wings vibrating and noticed he had picked up speed to 500 kilometres per hour in his headlong pursuit of the bomber. They were down to 3500 metres, the time now 2.46a.m. Otto continued to match as closely as possible the acrobatics of the stricken Lancaster to keep the bomber in his grasp – the swallow pursuing the desperate blowfly.
‘He’s using a lot of time and juice with his antics,’ Fred said.
‘Someone’s forgotten to put on his parachute,’ Otto replied. He slid to port again and fired once more into the burning wing, which started to spray flame like a Guy Fawkes sky rocket, then he darted right. Now the bomber levelled out and hung like a board in the air.
‘Time for you to jump, my friend!’ Fred had only just spoken when the first shadow rushed past their port wing. Then the second ... the third. Otto and Fred counted them off aloud – four, five, six ... a pause – seven, the pilot. That was all of them.
The Lancaster suddenly reared up like a marlin trying to throw the hook, twisted slightly to the left, then flipped over its burning wing and plunged straight down into the darkness. Scarcely a minute later – at 2.56a.m. – Otto and Fred saw the Lancaster erupt in a fireball as it struck the ground. In the reflected light of this inferno they could see seven parachutes strung out like patio lights, disappearing into the night.
‘Parsival from Eagle 98 – Sieg Heil!’
‘Viktor, understood – congratulations.’
‘Thanks. A question: Do you have another courier for me?’
‘Eagle 98 from Parsival – all couriers have gone to bed – suggest you do the same.’
As Otto turned towards his base, Fred tried to mask his elation: ‘All right, Otakar, you got him, congratulations on your first kill. Now you know how it’s done, you won’t screw it up next time!’
I asked Professor Fries how it felt to shoot down his first bomber. ‘It was a feeling like Christmas, Easter, Whitsun-holiday and my birthday rolled into one – not a scrap of nerves, just joy.’ He recalled resetting his course for home and trying in this moment to define his feelings – not just happy and proud, but freed of the ‘curse’ that had dogged him until now, the depressing sense of non-achievement. But he also felt an indefinable sense of satisfaction the crew had all made it out of the bomber alive.
The pilot and one other crew member of this 97 Squadron Lancaster made it back to England, three were captured quickly while two remained at large for several weeks before they, too, became prisoners of war. One of the three first captured, Warrant Officer Samuel Ramsden, a 23-year-old Canadian, died just two weeks before Germany’s surrender, when his POW column was strafed by aircraft from his own side.
Part Two
COMBAT
CHAPTER 6
FLYING BLIND
Destroying a target in the dark was often a battle as much against the elements as the enemy. Both sides in the night war struggled to gain the upper hand against the common dangers of darkness and weather, which claimed the lives of many airmen without the enemy needing to fire a single shot. Adverse weather conditions killed more airmen on some raids than night fighters or anti-aircraft fire from the ground. Weather caused attacking bombers and defending fighters alike to become hopelessly lost, to seize up in mid-air or to crash while struggling to land in atrocious conditions. Bad weather could turn the job of finding the target into a matter of pure luck. Conversely, though, it often gave pilots cloud cover to hide in and shake off attacks by prowling night fighters.
For Bomber Command crews, the dangers of darkness and weather were made worse by the long distances to many targets, usually over large stretches of water and often in shocking conditions. As the war progressed, both sides developed increasingly sophisticated gadgetry to improve their chances both of finding targets in the darkness and of returning home safely. This technological race to ‘see in the dark’ by developing better navigation tools and the instruments of stealth made both the RAF and the Luftwaffe airmen by turns more deadly and more vulnerable as each side fought to stay a step ahead of the enemy.
By the time Otto Fries downed his first bomber in August 1943, Col Jones had already finished his first tour of operations and was training bomb aimers and navigators in these arts of warfare. Through several frightening experiences he had learnt how dangerous the weather could be. One took place ear
ly into his fifth op, to bomb Essen, on 6 April 1942. Both the target and his Stirling, ‘T’ Tommy, were the same as when he ditched in the Channel exactly two months later. Col’s diary records what happened soon after take-off at 1a.m., with Flight Lieutenant Reginald Turtle at the controls.
Bugger of a night. Rain and low cloud. Considerable doubt as to whether we should go or not. Wing/Co (Spence) asked Turtle what he thought about it and Turtle said the weather was just about flyable. Group [command] gave last minute instructions that we were to fly low out to sea under the cloud and then climb when we had passed it.
But Turtle had other views. He decided to climb through it. We had got to 10,000ft about 15 miles from the English coast, when we got flat into the middle of bad static and icing. I saw rings of fire round the props, fire playing along the fuselage. The front and rear gunners saw their guns alive with fire in front of them, while the rear gunner saw a living line of flame where the trailing aerial ought to have been. Later that was burned off.
Then she began to ice. I saw the lightning in a quick glance, because at that stage I was busy working out a fix – days before Gee [radio position-fixing device]. Got it set when became aware that the kite was bucketing about a hell of a lot. Then I saw the ice. Piling up on leading edge of wings and tail of plane, being chucked off the props and hitting the fuselage with a noise like flak.
Then old ‘T’ Tommy began to fall and the engines stalled. I thought that only two did but Henry Hammond DFM, mid-upper [gunner] told me after that, for a second, all four went. Anyway we dropped like a stone and it took Turtle and Tony all their time to pull it out at 4000ft. They did not get control properly until she had got down to 400ft. Rowly told me he thought his feet were going to touch the roofs of a small town we got over. Must have come 15 miles at a hell of a pace. I have no idea how long this lasted. We came home after that but our compasses were unserviceable and we wandered all over East Anglia trying to find base. Skipper could not steer a course, because the machine went in a curve.
Then we had to jettison bombs on Lakenheath. We did a bombing run at 2000ft – and three of them, 1900 lb, went off! Set safe too. Nearly blew us out of the sky.
In December 1942, the Stirling flown by the commanding officer of 75 (NZ) Squadron, Wing Commander Victor Mitchell DFC – a man Col knew well and admired – was not so lucky when it struck bad weather. His aircraft was one of four Stirlings in that squadron alone that failed to return to Mildenhall entirely because of weather.
Only a minority of bomber crew downed by night fighters over the continent or water survived – the few thousand picked up from the ‘drink’ during the war by air-sea rescue craft is an indication of how many others perished in the cold seas or were simply lost without trace. Col flew several ‘gardening’ operations to lay mines in German-controlled waters, but this was far from straightforward. Even without the threat of German flak ships sitting in wait to defend important waterways, bombers on mine-laying operations faced plenty of natural hazards. Flying just above the sea at night – and sometimes in fog or rain – a bomber could fall victim to the smallest miscalculation and plunge into the sea, with almost no chance of the crew surviving.
Jim Coman, a former wireless operator I met at the 2008 reunion of Col’s 149 Squadron, said that while mine-laying he used the 80-metre-long weighted aerial, which trailed 15 metres beneath his bomber, as a means of judging the aircraft’s height above the water. One type of mine designed to float unseen beneath the surface had to be dropped from an exact – and very low – altitude to become effective. On such flights if the cable aerial hit the water, Coman would tell the skipper to climb immediately.
Col, as observer, initially performed the joint role of navigator and bomb aimer, and so had to find the way to the drop-zone, release the mines, then set the course home again. He referred to these many tasks in a letter home in November 1941, in which he described the observer’s combined duties:
He uses wireless aids to get what are called fixes, that is, he knows he is on a certain position on the map at a certain time. Then he also uses the stars, which is called astral navigation, by which he can also fix his position. Then he looks at the map and then at the ground, and when he sees something on the ground that he recognizes on his map, like a big town or a prominent bend in a river, or a place where two railway lines cross, then he knows where he is. This last method is pinpointing. Of course, you can’t always see the ground, and then you have to make certain allowances. But that in the main is how you navigate. The observer has also to release the bombs, which he does by pressing a little push button on the end of a cord. He also has to take photographs if any photographs are required; but in the main the camera is more or less automatic, and all you do is to press another button. In special circumstances he might also be required to man one of the guns on board. I sometimes think that his duties are so many that if there was anything to cook on board he would also be asked to do a job of work in the cooking line.
The roles of navigator and bomb aimer were later split, as navigation tools became more complicated and thus needed more concentration. By the time Col began flying operations in January 1942, however, his tools of trade had not improved much. The first significant advance, used on operations from March that year, was called Gee. It enabled bombers to establish their position by cross-referencing radio pulses transmitted from three separate points in Britain. By midway through Col’s first tour of operations in 1942, Gee was becoming a standard tool for navigators. These pulses could not be picked up over the horizon, so Gee was limited in range – a definite drawback when attacking eastern targets, where the potential to get lost was in any case greater. This inability to peek over the earth’s curvature also disadvantaged lower-flying aircraft, like the Stirling. And the Germans eventually found means of jamming Gee signals.
Even by the time Col had completed his first tour towards the end of 1942, the tools of navigation had not improved at nearly the pace achieved later in the war. A more advanced over-the-horizon navigational aid called Oboe superseded Gee and improved accuracy, but the big breakthrough came at the end of 1942, with a revolutionary device known as H2S. This enabled navigators to ‘see’ the terrain below without reference to guiding signals anchored to fixed points in Britain, and was therefore not limited in range. The picture H2S gave the navigator would satisfy most children’s expectations of what a radar screen should show – a constant scan of the land below, with areas of water appearing dark on the screen, open country as an indeterminate fuzz and built-up areas as bright blobs. Rough though it seems today, from January 1943 this device dramatically improved bombers’ chances of survival and success. It boosted the confidence of bomber crews just as their casualty rate was reaching appalling new levels.
But for the period in 1942 when Col flew most of his ops, he and other navigators were still relying heavily on dead reckoning – calculating the position, where possible with the help of visual landmarks, or ‘pinpoints’ – and factoring in wind speed to try to determine its effect on both the plane’s course and the way the bombs would fall to the ground. He drew on this experience on his longest trip of the war, to Genoa, on 23 October 1942. His diary describes a round trip of nearly nine hours, which he flew in another ‘T’ Tommy that had replaced the earlier one in which he had crashed into the sea in June.
Wing/Co. asked me this morning whether I would like a trip tonight. Though I had a definite hangover I said I would, which was at least half true. I was keen to fly, but I wished I had felt better. Still....
Then I found out that we were going to Genoa, which heartened me considerably, as I have always wanted to go to Italy. Took with us Flight Lieutenant Simmons DFM, DFC, the Gee expert from group. Had a special Gee aboard. Took off and all was well – but the bloody Gee would not work. Actually did not work until halfway across France. Told Simmy that I did not have time to worry with it, so he struggled with it. The trouble was acute divider trouble and then some.
W
ell we landed up to port, well to port. Crossed the French coast on ETA [estimated time of arrival] and set course. I think we were all right up to there; but the wind changed then. As I say we went to port and had to alter course. Then far ahead we saw the Alps. I have never seen anything more inspiring. There was 10/10 cloud below us; but the summits were unclouded. They looked so serene, so apart, so lonely and so majestic, bathed in moonlight. Mont Blanc was away to the port beam, the most aloof, impersonal, unapproachable thing I have ever seen. We seemed merely intruders, just a tiny moth in comparison.
We rather skirted the Alps than flew over them and as a matter of fact we were too far to starboard. We flew a little more than mountain top level and over the top of a pass. Far below us we could see ravines, with streams and one road. We saw a ravine broaden out into a valley and branch out into more valleys which narrowed until lost in the labyrinth of peaks. Little villages nestled under the shoulders of the mountains, their households winking so eerily. We flashed a ‘V’ sign at one village, and to our astonishment the answer came back – again the ‘V’ sign. We thought that perhaps it was wishful seeing, so tried again. Again the same result. Wizard! Simmy thought the occasion of crossing the Alps appropriate for yodelling through the intercom. But though the thought was good, the result might have been more tuneful.
Well, we passed the Alps and turned east on the last leg, across the plains of Lombardy. Saw the coast far ahead and knew that all was well. Arrived there and Simmy acted as bomb aimer. We found a good deal of cloud there, so finally had to bomb on a dead-reckoning run [i.e. reliant on calculations rather than sighting the target or, later, with the help of electronic target-fixing]. I think we got Genoa, though a great many fires were at Savona, which must have been pretty well destroyed.
Under a Bomber's Moon: The true story of two airmen at war over Germany Page 7