After the Flood

by John Nichol

  A few days later, on 5 April, Leonard Cheshire and the other Flight Commanders of 617 Squadron began marking targets, not just for their own squadron, but for the whole of 5 Group, a total of 144 Lancasters in all, ousting the Pathfinders who had previously done the marking. Whereas the Pathfinders dropped their markers from relatively high altitude, 617’s crews used the low-level techniques that Martin and Cheshire had perfected. Their first target was an aircraft factory and repair workshops on the outskirts of Toulouse. Cheshire had previously used one of the squadron’s Lancasters for his low-level marking, but he had now switched to a far faster and more manoeuvrable twin-engined Mosquito bomber. He would mark the aiming point with red spot fires, 617 would bomb those markers with a mixture of high explosive and incendiaries, and the other squadrons would then bomb on the fires that they had started.

  The plan was supposed to be top secret, but it became clear that security had been breached when an Australian crewman from another squadron asked Nick Knilans about it. When he passed that information on to his Flight Commander, Les Munro, a major flap erupted. Knilans told his commanders that he knew the man was an Aussie based at Scampton but did not know his name. ‘I did,’ he later said, ‘but why get him into trouble? Someone would get court-martialled. Somebody who had been in combat many times would have their life ruined. I suggested that they give a talk on security to all aircrew at Woodhall Spa and at Scampton. They did so.’

  After a four-hour flight to the target, the Lancaster crews watched as Cheshire made two preliminary low-level passes over the factory roofs, once more giving the civilian workers a warning and the opportunity to take cover. ‘I could see his Mosquito zooming about through a shower of light flak shells and searchlights,’ Nick Knilans recalled. Cheshire dropped his markers on the aiming point, the aircraft repair hangar, on the third pass, and did so with such accuracy that the back-up markers, Les Munro and Joe McCarthy, did not need to mark the target at all. The first stick of bombs was a direct hit and the subsequent bombing almost obliterated the factory.

  Don Cheney was making his ‘second dickey’ familiarisation flight on the attack – a trip all new pilots made as an observer with an experienced crew before embarking on operations. Watching Cheshire marking the target and the 617 crews bombing the markers made him realise ‘just how different ops were on 617 Squadron to Main Force; it was precise and exact, and not just dropping bombs all over the place.’ The dangers of the latter approach were vividly illustrated later that week when inaccurate bombing during Main Force raids on French and Belgian railway yards saw 1,000 civilians killed.

  While the Toulouse raid had been Don Cheney’s first op with 617, it proved to be Johnny Johnson’s last. He had already flown on twenty operations with the squadron, but his wife, Gwyn, was now pregnant, and when they landed after the attack on the aircraft factory, his pilot, Joe McCarthy, took him aside. ‘Johnny,’ he said. ‘Gwyn doesn’t know whether this child’s going to have a father or whether she’s going to have a husband. She must be worried stiff. You’ve got to give her a chance, pack it up now.’

  His words made Johnson realise that although he didn’t want to leave his crew, he had other, greater responsibilities. Gwyn had never expressed any worries to him or asked him to stop flying combat ops, ‘but she was relieved when I told her,’ he says. ‘Though she said, “Are you sure?” Well I wasn’t entirely, but I knew it was the right thing to do.’1

  * * *

  If Bomber Harris harboured any doubts about 617’s low-level marking technique, they had now been removed, and he authorised 5 Group to continue operations completely independently of the Pathfinders and all other groups. Their first taste of marking for Main Force came on 18 April 1944, with an attack on Juvisy, just to the south of Paris, one of the largest railway marshalling yards in the region. In the months leading up to D-Day it was one of many sites targeted with the aim of disrupting German attempts to send reinforcements to Normandy once the invasion had taken place. That message was reinforced by 617’s Station Commander, who told them that the success of any invasion would depend on the destruction of this and similar targets. If they were destroyed, it would not be possible for the Germans to mass additional men and munitions to counter the invasion when it came.

  The marshalling yard was within a densely built-up area, with houses as close as 20 yards from the perimeter fence, and at the briefing the aircrews were warned once again of the danger to French civilians from misdirected bombs. The weather was good, with a fresh wind that would help to blow away the smoke and dust from the explosions, giving good visibility for the following aircraft. Their Lancasters were each loaded with four 1,000-pound and four 500-pound bombs, ‘for immediate effect, no delays, just to smash the place up as much as possible to ensure that nothing and no one was able to go through for some months,’ says John Pryor.2

  It was a bright, starlit night and, looking down, Pryor, a twenty-seven-year-old Essex farmer’s son with a square jaw and a steely, slightly intimidating gaze, could see the Channel clearly as they flew south. Had this been a raid on Germany, their bombs would have been armed from the moment they crossed the coastline, but flying over occupied France, they were not armed until the last moment to minimise the risk of civilian casualties. Flares had already been dropped to illuminate the target, but Pryor was ordered to drop back-up flares for extra light to avoid any mistakes.

  Wing Commander Cheshire was in position and told his crews that the TIs (target indicators) were well positioned and to ‘just go in and bomb them’. There was a heavy responsibility on both the navigator and the bomb-aimer, to make sure that, despite the smoke and dust from the previous bombs, their own were dropping inside the marshalling yard and not on somebody’s house. There were no German night-fighters in evidence, only anti-aircraft fire ‘of which we took no notice’.

  Having dropped his own bombs accurately, Pryor was ordered to circle in case he was needed to suppress anti-aircraft fire, and so had a grandstand view as the Main Force began bombing, whereupon ‘all hell was let loose’. Through the dust and smoke, he could see that the marshalling yard had been ‘ripped to pieces’ and, despite the fresh wind, dust and debris were now obscuring the target, so the Pathfinder Force began dropping parachute flares to guide the Main Force bombing. These drifted off in the crosswind and, though Main Force’s initial bombing was on or close to the target, the later aircraft were dropping bombs as much as a mile to the north and west of the target, missing the yard and bombing the built-up areas around it. His aircrews could hear Cheshire on the radio, telling the Main Force that their bombs were missing the target, but it did not seem to have any effect on them. As he turned for home, still with another 200 or so Main Force aircraft queuing up to bomb, Pryor had ‘a sinking feeling for the French people living in the built-up area that may have been hurt or even killed.’

  As usual, Leonard Cheshire was the last to leave the target area and reported that the marshalling yard had been so badly damaged that ‘not a square yard could be used for many a day’. That was confirmed by reconnaissance photographs showing that, while bombing had also extended for up to a mile to the north, the yard itself had been devastated. French civilians later confirmed that there was so much debris, smashed and broken trucks and trains, that it was ‘long after D-Day’ before it was possible to get even one railway line open again. The raid had been a great success, but between 100 and 200 people had been killed in the houses adjoining the yard, many as delay-fused bombs detonated while rescuers were trying to reach those trapped by the initial bombing. ‘It mattered,’ John Pryor said, ‘but of course it had to be done.’

  * * *

  Although the success of the low-level, precision target marking for 617 Squadron instigated by Mick Martin and Leonard Cheshire had led to it being ‘rolled out’ for 5 Group too, there were still powerful voices within Bomber Command who claimed that, while the technique might be effective against targets in occupied France, it would be ‘suicidal’ to a
dopt low-level marking against heavily defended targets in Germany. The ultimate test-bed for its wider application therefore came on the night of 24/25 April 1944, when Cheshire led four Mosquitos to mark targets in Munich for a large force of 5 Group bombers. It was made clear to Cheshire that the allocation of the Mosquitos to 617 Squadron would only be made permanent after an effective demonstration of their effectiveness in low-level marking over the target.

  The new technique had already been used at Brunswick two nights before the Munich raid, but due to the radio of one aircraft being stuck on ‘transmit’, drowning out all other radio traffic, the attack had been a disaster. Having failed to achieve the required results at Brunswick, the Munich raid was now seen as make or break for the low-level marking technique.

  If Cheshire and the other pilots revelled in the speed and manoeuvrability of the Mosquito after the ponderous Lancaster, their navigators were less enamoured. Conditions for them were ‘almost viciously cramped compared to the Lancaster’.3 There was no navigation table and the navigator had to sit with a board across his lap and the charts and log sheet pinned to it. Gerry Fawke’s navigator, Tom Bennett, found that ‘Operational necessity demanded that the dividers, Dalton computer and India rubber be firmly tied by appropriate lengths of string to the clips of the parachute harness if they were to remain available at all times, despite the gyrations of the aircraft in the close operational role.’ He kept his pencils inside the forehead covering of his helmet and his Perspex ruler pushed down the leg of his right flying boot, in common with all Bomber Command navigators. ‘I always figured that the Germans must have had great stocks of these Perspex rulers, taken from shot-down navigators!’

  In addition to directing his pilot to the target, the navigator performed several other tasks. ‘The pilot never moved from his seat. He sat there in lordly authority, directing the navigator with an imperious wave of his hand when he wanted petrol tanks changed, or to crawl forward into the nose, to fuse and select the markers … At times the navigators of the Mosquito Marker Force were busier than one-armed paper-hangers!’

  As an added stress on the Munich flight, even starting from RAF Manston in Kent, the Mosquito crews could expect to arrive back at Manston with ‘a spoonful of petrol’ – no more than ten minutes’ fuel in their tanks, compared with the normal safe margin of one to two hours’. However, pilots and navigators considered the odds and accepted them, and there was even ‘a quickening of adrenalin flow at the thought of a challenge to their professionalism’.

  At the final briefing, the normal banter between crews was in full flow, the Lancaster navigators helpfully advising the Mosquito crews that the way to find Manston was to fly south until they hit the coast and then turn to port and follow the coastline all the way to the North Foreland, by which time Manston should be in sight. The Mosquito navigators accepted that advice in the spirit in which it was offered!

  After arriving at Manston, the four aircraft were left as close as possible to the take-off point and the fuel tanks were then filled to the brim. Even so, the navigators calculated that they would have no more than six minutes over the target if they were to return before their fuel ran out. Such was the speed of the Mosquitos, compared with the ponderous Lancasters, that when they took off at one minute before midnight on 24 April 1944, it was three hours after the 244 Main Force bombers had departed.

  There was ten-tenths cloud over northern Germany, but the skies had cleared by the time they reached Munich. The marking force ahead of them was already dropping flares to illuminate the target area and Mosquitos from 627 Squadron were also dropping Window to confuse the German radar. Leonard Cheshire directed the flare force and then called ‘Tally ho!’ as he sighted the aiming point and put his Mosquito into a dive. Munich was defended by over 200 light flak guns, which put up a barrage of shells, but Cheshire dived through the clouds of flak bursts, dropped his markers at 300 feet and then called in the other three to drop their markers onto the spot fires that he had laid. According to Bob Knights, they marked it with such accuracy that ‘There was this magnificent aiming point of a circle of spot fires, which they couldn’t miss.’4

  Wilfred Bickley also saw Cheshire put his marker ‘right in the middle of the town’, and after the op asked Cheshire’s navigator, ‘What was it like?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ the navigator said. ‘I had my bloody eyes shut.’5

  The 617 Squadron Lancasters were first to bomb, clustering their high-explosive and incendiary bomb-loads closely around the spot fires, both beginning the destruction of the target and acting as even more unmistakable markers for the succeeding squadrons, and as the Mosquitos turned for home, Tom Bennett ‘saw the agony of Munich already beginning’, with bombs raining down on the Bavarian capital. All four Mosquitos were coned by searchlights – highlighted by multiple beams – but successfully evaded them. Dave Shannon was coned at the precise moment when he’d asked his navigator, Len Sumpter, what course to set. ‘Drop your starboard wing and I’ll tell you,’ Sumpter said. As he did so, Sumpter held up his chart and used the glare of the searchlight beam to read off the new course for his pilot to follow, ‘a first-class example of using the resources of the enemy for one’s own benefit!’6

  All four aircraft landed safely back at Manston, though not without incident. As Cheshire was coming in to land, he was warned by the ground controller that an enemy intruder was circling the airfield. The runway landing lights were then switched off. Cheshire told his navigator to turn off their navigation lights to make them a more difficult target for the raider, but in his haste, the navigator turned off the whole electrical system, including the power for the navigation kit and the fuel pumps, and hastily had to remedy his mistake. The landing lights were still off when Gerry Fawke came in to land, which he mistook for ‘electrical trouble with the airfield lighting’,7 and he was also fired on by the intruder. Fortunately his aircraft was undamaged, but the lack of runway lights caused him to overshoot and he came to a halt with the undercarriage buried in the sand dunes beyond the end of the runway.

  The delight and relief of the Intelligence Section staff at the successful return of the Mosquito crews showed that they had been aware of the gamble that they had taken. ‘The post-op mug of hot sweet tea was always to be savoured by returning aircrew, but when it was served up by a pretty young WAAF whose demeanour showed how overjoyed she was at our safe return, and when it was accompanied by some very special (for wartime) sandwiches and biscuits, then I must admit that one did feel the effort had been appreciated.’8

  When Gerry Fawke’s aircraft was extracted, undamaged, from the sand, he discovered that their entire bomb-load of markers was still in the bomb-bay. Fawke spoke for his navigator too, when he said, ‘God, Ben, all that chase down from Woodhall, economical fuel attention all the bloody way to Munich and back, shot at by a Jerry night-fighter, an argument with a heap of sand and the bloody markers never left the aircraft. What a complete waste of time and effort!’

  However, if it had been a waste of time for Fawke’s crew, the raid on Munich had been spectacularly successful in terms of bombing accuracy, destroying well over 1,000 city-centre buildings, and giving a vivid demonstration of the effectiveness of low-level marking. As a result, 617 Squadron retained its four Mosquitos, and 5 Group – and later Bomber Command’s entire Main Force – duly adopted the marking techniques developed by Cheshire’s squadron. Three Pathfinder squadrons were permanently transferred to 5 Group, which became known by other squadrons, in what was partly disparagement and partly a grudging compliment, as ‘The Independent Air Force’.

  Having not slept for twenty-four hours, the Mosquito crews flew back to Woodhall Spa early the next morning. Aircrews often took ‘wakey-wakey pills’ – Benzedrine tablets – to keep them awake, but they had taken none on this trip. Navigator Tom Bennett was daydreaming, reviewing the previous night’s op as the aircraft cruised at 3,000 feet, when the combination of his fatigue and the warm sunshine caused him to dro
p off for a few moments. He awoke with a start, berating himself for having dozed off, but as he glanced at the altimeter, he saw that they were down to 700 feet and still in a shallow dive. When he looked at the pilot, he discovered that he too had ‘succumbed to the blandishments of Morpheus’ and was fast asleep with his chin on his chest. With commendable alacrity, Bennett released his seat harness and leaned across to ease the control column back with his right hand, while simultaneously thumping Fawke on the shoulder with his left and bellowing ‘WAKE UP, MATE!’ into his ear. When Fawke had regained the aircraft’s altitude and attitude, he gave Bennett an embarrassed smile and a wink. Strangely, the incident slipped both their minds when completing their post-op debriefing …

  All the 617 Squadron aircrews had been granted seven days’ leave, and the dog-tired Bennett then managed to fall asleep again both in the car – fortunately driven by someone else – taking him to Grantham station, and then on the train to King’s Cross. He awoke as the train came to a halt in London to find that he had ‘slumbered gently throughout the journey with my head cushioned by the soft shoulder of an attractive girl’. He stammered out an apology but she brushed it aside, saying that she would ‘consider it part of her contribution to the war effort’!

  CHAPTER 6

  The End of the Beginning

  In late April 1944, as part of the build-up towards D-Day, Exercise Tiger was taking place off the south coast of Devon. It involved 30,000 American troops, who were to practise a beach landing at Slapton Sands under live fire. A communications failure first led to a ‘friendly fire’ incident in which American troops were shelled by a British cruiser, but worse was to follow. A British corvette and a line of nine landing ships laden with American troops came under fire from German E-boats which had evaded British naval defensive screens. Two landing craft were sunk and two more badly damaged, with the loss of 750 US servicemen. Official embarrassment over the disaster, coupled with the need for secrecy ahead of the D-Day landings, meant that all information about the disaster was suppressed and its full scale was not acknowledged until after the war was over.