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Under a Bomber's Moon: The true story of two airmen at war over Germany

Page 23

by Stephen Harris


  John Herbert ‘Jack’ Ekelund, 23, Flight Sergeant and one of Col’s pilots while at 149 Squadron. Ekelund, a Canadian, died on 16 October 1942 with his whole crew when they crashed into the sea south of St Nazaire, France, while laying mines. All are buried at Port Joinville Communal Cemetery, L’Ile-d’Yeu, France.

  Victor Mitchell DFC, Wing Commander, pilot whom Col Jones knew at 149 Squadron in 1942. Mitchell transferred to 75 (NZ) Squadron as commanding officer and died when his Stirling was one of four from the squadron lost in bad weather on operations on 17 December 1942. Mitchell and his crew are commemorated at Runnymede Memorial, near Windsor.

  Reginald W.A. Turtle DFC, 26, Flight Lieutenant, pilot of the Stirling in which Col Jones experienced serious icing before aborting a mission to Essen in April 1942. Turtle was shot down by a night fighter on 7 June 1942, well into his second tour of operations, and is buried in the Vredenhof Cemetery, Schiermonnikoog, Holland.

  Kenneth Duke Knocker, 35, Wing Commander, pilot serving with 149 Squadron when Col Jones joined it, but was killed flying with 214 Squadron on 3 July 1942 and is buried at Westernieland General Cemetery, de Marne, Netherlands. Though Col refers to him as a New Zealander, he was born in Marlborough, England. His mother, the Baroness de Serclaes, was awarded the Military Medal for her work as a nurse in the First World War trenches. Col also knew Knocker’s wife Pauline who, in 1931, became one of the first women to qualify as a pilot in New Zealand.

  Eric Pierce Wynn, 20, Pilot Officer, pilot, a Canadian friend of Col Jones, and one of Barry Martin’s pilots at 149 Squadron. Col Jones was a pallbearer at Wynn’s funeral at Beck Row Cemetery, after he died when his Stirling crashed while taking off from Lakenheath on 24 August 1942, as described in Chapter 11. Other friends of Col’s killed in the same crash were D.A. Pebworth and Jim Trotter, an Australian.

  William Cyril Hutchings DFC, 29, Squadron Leader, pilot, killed on 10 October 1942 when his 149 Squadron Stirling caught fire and crashed near Mildenhall during an air display for a visiting Russian delegation. He was cremated at Golders Green, London.

  Rawdon Hume ‘Ron’ Middleton VC, 26, Pilot Officer, pilot, an Australian friend of Col’s from 149 Squadron. Middleton was awarded the Victoria Cross posthumously for his heroic actions on 29 November 1942, described in Chapter 11. He is buried at Beck Row Cemetery, St John’s Churchyard, beside Mildenhall Airbase and in the row next to Eric Wynn’s grave.

  Barry Martin, 31, Flight Lieutenant, navigator, from Christchurch, Col Jones’s closest wartime friend, killed when his 7 Squadron Pathfinder Stirling was shot down on 2 February 1943 near Rotterdam. He is buried in the Crooswijk General Cemetery, Rotterdam. Martin’s DFC was gazetted two days after his death.

  Tom Benson Blackburn, 25, Pilot Officer, navigator, from Christchurch. Col Jones was best man at his wedding in Liverpool in November 1941. Blackburn broke his back in a flying accident in 1942, made it back into the cockpit but was killed in another flying accident at his airfield in April 1943. His South African wife, Patricia, settled in Christchurch after the war. He is buried at Helston Cemetery, England.

  Les Martin, Flying Officer, pilot, English friend of Col Jones and died on 14 May 1943 when his 149 Squadron Stirling was shot down near Antwerp. He is buried in the Schoonselhof Cemetery, Antwerp.

  John Milton Patrick Riordan, 32, Sergeant, family friend of Col’s from Auckland, was killed when his 75 (NZ) Squadron Stirling was shot down and crashed into the sea off the Belgian coast on 26 May 1943. His body was not recovered and he is commemorated at Runnymede Memorial.

  Ian Willoughby Bazalgette VC, DFC, 25, Squadron Leader, Canadian pilot of the Lancaster in which Col Jones was bomb aimer during the first ‘firestorm’ raid on Hamburg in July 1943. Bazalgette subsequently joined the Pathfinder Force and won the Victoria Cross posthumously. On 4 August 1944, while Bazalgette was flare marking a German rocket launch site in France, flak knocked out both starboard engines of his Lancaster. He tried to crash-land after four of his crew parachuted but he and the other two crew died when the bomber exploded on impact.

  L.O. ‘Tony’ Tugwell, 26, Flight Lieutenant, pilot with whom Col flew while serving with 149 Squadron. Tugwell was killed when his 101 Squadron Lancaster was lost on an operation to Braunschweig on 13 August 1944. He is buried with seven other crew at Hanover War Cemetery, Germany.

  The Survivors

  The following details are among the few I could find about wartime colleagues Col wrote about and who survived the war.

  Dave Gibb, a New Zealander whom Col knew in Auckland before the war and with whom he flew his first two ops with 149 Squadron, transferred from 149 Squadron to 75 (NZ) Squadron. He settled in Banks Peninsula after the war, but kept in contact with Col’s family.

  Stan Galloway DFC, an air gunner from Lancashire, with whom Col flew early ops. Their pilots included Dave Gibb. Galloway flew a second tour, as a wireless operator with 75 (NZ) Squadron and won the DFC. After the war he married a pilot colleague’s sister and they had eight children together, one of whom, Gordon, made available valuable family material for this book. Stan Galloway became a quarry manager in Lancashire after the war. He visited Dave Gibb in New Zealand in the 1980s and died in 2007, aged 85.

  Charles Lofthouse, OBE, DFC, English friend who invited Col home on leave to meet his family. Col went to Buckingham Palace for Lofthouse’s investiture of the OBE (military), awarded after the young officer helped to rescue five trainee crew from a burning bomber that had crashed at Waterbeach airbase in November 1942. Squadron Leader Lofthouse was on his 37th operation when he was shot down by a night fighter in August 1943, during the first raid of the Battle of Berlin. Lofthouse and his entire crew of seven baled out and were taken prisoner. He was interned at the POW camp immortalised in the film The Great Escape, Stalag Luft Sagan, and helped to forge maps and identity documents for the mass breakout. He became a school teacher after the war and also served as President of the 149 Squadron Association. The London Daily Telegraph published a lengthy obituary when Lofthouse died in October 2002, aged 80.

  Al Shoreman, wireless operator with whom Col Jones flew 17 ops, including the first ‘thousand bomber’ raid on Cologne in May 1942. Shoreman had an eye blown out by shrapnel during his second tour, but put it back again. Despite the injury he remained in the RAF after the war. His daughter, Jan Burke – one of four children – lent me his logbook and other personal records to help with my research. At 94, Shoreman was still able to see with both eyes, but was too ill to interview.

  Johnny Brittain, whose wedding Col attended at Church Stretton in 1942, and whom he replaced on Jock Watt’s crew, settled in Canada after the war and remained friends with Al Shoreman, another guest at the wedding.

  Eric Whitney, the pilot of the Stirling in which Col Jones crashed in the English Channel in June 1942 and whose BBC recording of the episode is quoted in Chapter 2, lived in Warwick after the war. His logbook is held at the RAF Museum at Hendon, London.

  Also mentioned

  Noel Parker, DFC and bar, from Goulburn, New South Wales, was on his 10th op as pilot of a 75 (NZ) Squadron Stirling when it fell to Otto Fries’s guns in November 1943. After escaping back to England via Spain following this shooting down, Parker joined 97 Pathfinder Squadron. After the war he flew passengers for Trans Australian Airlines and Qantas and, after retiring from that job, ferried light aircraft solo from Italy to Melbourne well into his sixties. According to a family website he died in 1996, aged 80.

  Jack Hyde, one of Parker’s crew, seriously wounded when shot down by Otto Fries, was released from a German POW camp in April 1945 and returned to Christchurch where he died in 2007, aged 85.

  The Germans

  Otto-Heinrich Fries and Fred Staffa helped to rebuild Germany after the war – Otto as an architect and Fred as a construction engineer. In August 1945 Otto, barred from crossing the Rhine, instead crossed the Neckar at Heidelberg when, with Fred, he helped to rebuild one of the many destroyed bridges over the river. They stud
ied together at Darmstadt University, razed with much of the old city by a firestorm bombing in September 1944. Otto married Irmgard in 1948 and they settled in Berlin, where he eventually became Professor of Architecture at the city’s technical university. Irmgard’s child by her first marriage, Renate, died in 1956, but she and Otto had two children and three grandchildren. The Frieses celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary in 2008, shortly after Professor Fries’s 90th birthday.

  Fred worked as a construction engineer in Frankfurt and Essen, moved to Berlin to become the city’s construction director and then joined Otto on the teaching staff of the technical university. He and his wife, Inge, had four children. When I met them Otto, Fred and their wives were still meeting every Monday at each other’s homes in the west of Berlin to play bridge.

  Paul Zorner, after his return from 55 months in a Soviet labour camp, had soon to leave his wife and daughter again for two and a half years while he retrained in Stuttgart as an engineer. He rejoined them to move to Bonn in the early 1950s, and while there he applied unsuccessfully to become a pilot in the post-war German air force, established in 1955. After that, until his retirement in 1988, Zorner worked for the large German chemicals company, Hoechst, including spending seven years in the Netherlands. He and his wife, Gerda, had three children, five grandchildren and a great-grandchild. In 2008 they celebrated their 65th wedding anniversary in Homburg-Saar, south-west Germany.

  The author welcomes feedback on people, incidents or themes mentioned in this book, via the website:

  www.underabombersmoon.com

  The website also contains extensive additional information and photographs relating to the story.

  FRONT COVER FLAP

  They were the best of enemies – dedicated, skilled and deadly. In the night skies above wartime Germany an RAF navigator-air bomber from New Zealand and a Luftwaffe pilot seek out their targets, testing the gap between success and their own destruction as they cross each other’s paths. The odds are heavily against either of them making it through the war, but as this sobering realisation displaces their initial exuberant sense of adventure, both come to see in their youthful sacrifice the survival of all they hold dear. Under a Bomber’s Moon reaches across the divide of years, of geography, of nationality, to tell their story largely in their own words – describing both the breathtaking clashes in the air and the camaraderie, humour, patriotism and personal tragedies that became their war.

  Stephen Harris began his journey of discovery because he wanted to know the truth of his great-uncle Colwyn Jones’s fate. With Col’s vividly written letters and diary as a starting-point, he set out to discover what really happened on the night Col’s extraordinary luck ran out. Little did he know that his quest would lead him to a meeting with a former Luftwaffe pilot who was pitted against his great-uncle in the skies over Germany. Otto-Heinrich Fries proved to be both engaging and articulate, eventually allowing Harris to tell his story in this book. The result is a unique and personal account of two highly successful airmen from opposing sides.

  BACK COVER MATERIAL

  The gripping story of two airmen in World War Two – one in the RAF, the other in the Luftwaffe.

  Stephen Harris discovers the truth about his great-uncle’s exploits in the skies above Germany – and meets a Luftwaffe pilot sent up each night to hunt him.

  INDEX

  A

  Aachen, 1

  Alexandra, 1

  Antwerp, 1

  Ardennes, 1

  Arendt, Hannah, 1

  Arnhem, 1

  Auckland, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11

  Auschwitz, 1, 2

  Awatea, 1, 2

  B

  Bad Dürkheim, 1, 2

  Ballauff, Tony, 1

  Barnes, Roy L, 1, 2, 3

  Barnes, William George ‘Crasher’, 1

  Barz, Ingeburg, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

  Barz, Johannes, 1, 2

  Batten, Jean, 1

  Bazalgette VC, Ian Willoughby, 1

  Beck Row War Cemetery, 1, 2, 3, 4

  Berlin, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44

  Berlin War Cemetery

  see Heerstrasse

  Bett, Millicent, 1

  Bett, Raymond C, 1, 2

  Biermann, Wolf, 1, 2

  Birmingham, 1

  Bismarck, 1, 2

  Bledisloe, Viscount

  Sir Charles Bathurst, 1

  Boldt, Karl, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

  Brandenburg, 1

  Braunschweig (Brunswick), 1

  Bremen, 1, 2, 3, 4

  Bremner, Jack, 1, 2

  Bristol, 1

  Bude, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

  Burke, Jan, 1

  C

  Cairns, Jock, 1

  Cambridge, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

  Cambridgeshire, 1

  Campbell, Edward, 1

  Cassino, 1

  Caucasus, 1

  Chagall, Marc, 1

  Chamberlain, Neville, 1

  Charlton-Jones, Cecil, 1, 2

  Cheek, Geoff, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12

  Church Stretton, 1, 2

  Churchill, Sir Winston, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

  Cologne, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16

  Coman, Jim, 1

  Coney, Fred, 1

  Coningsby airbase, 1

  Cooper, Sir Henry, 1

  Coventry, 1

  Crete, 1, 2, 3, 4

  Cuxhaven, 1, 2

  D

  Daladier, Edouard, 1

  Dalziel, John R, 1

  Demps, Laurenz, 1, 2

  Deubzer, Konrad, 1

  Devil’s Hill (Teufelsberg), 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

  Dresden, 1, 2

  Duisburg, 1

  Düsseldorf, 1

  E

  East Anglia, 1, 2

  Echterdingen airbase, 1, 2

  Ehle, Walter, 1, 2

  Ekelund, John Herbert ‘Jack’, 1, 2

  El Alamein, 1

  Ely, 1, 2, 3, 4

  Emden, 1

  English Channel, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23

  Essen, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

  Exton, Florence ‘Lass’ (nee Jones), 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

  F

  Feltwell airbase, 1

  Flegel, Tony, 1

  Frank, Hans-Dieter, 1

  Frankfurt, 1, 2, 3

  Friedrichshain, 1, 2

  Fries, Otto-Heinrich, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

  bombed, 1, 2, 3

  childhood, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

  combat victories, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20

  defeat and postwar, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9

  flying skills, 1, 2, 3, 4

  loss of friends, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

  shot down, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16

  step-daughter Renate, 1, 2, 3, 4

  wife Irmgard, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

  Fürstenberg, 1

  G

  Galloway, Gordon, 1

  Galloway, Stan, 1

  Genoa, 1, 2

  George VI, King, 1, 2

  Gironde River, 1

  Goebbels, Josef, 1

  Goebel, Wilhelm, 1

  Goldsmith, Benjamin Frederick, 1, 2

  Greenslade, William Roy ‘Al’, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9

  Griffith, Robert, 1, 2

  Grunewald, 1, 2

  Guernica, 1

  H

  Halifax, 1

  Hamburg, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21

  Hammond, Henry, 1

  ‘Happy Valley’ (Ruhr), 1

 

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