Heligoland

by George Drower

  Another RAF raid against German shipping in the Bight, on 3 December 1939, was soon claimed to represent a historic milestone. Twenty-four Wellingtons were attacked by Me109s and Me110s and in the ensuing combat the Wellington formations survived undamaged, while one Me109 was shot down. The bombers had been returning from a raid on German warships in which they apparently hit two cruisers; they dropped their 500lb bombs from 7,000– 10,000ft to give them a better chance of penetrating the decks. One Wellington of 115 Squadron, which apparently suffered a bomb hang-up on its bombing run, flew back over Heligoland and despite fierce flak ‘accidentally’ dropped the bomb on the island. This was the very first bomb dropped by the RAF on German soil during the war – or so it has been claimed by RAF historians. In fact the islanders, who seem never to have been consulted on this matter, have entirely different recollections. Eyewitnesses who were fishermen at the time remember that the very first RAF bomb dropped over Heligoland fell not on the island but in the harbour, completely destroying a naval ammunition supply vessel.

  The massacre of the Hampdens, and other losses in subsequent weeks in raids against German shipping, had prompted the RAF to opt for a change of tactics. On 20 February 1940 twenty Wellington bombers (known affectionately to their crews as ‘Wimpys’) were despatched on an experimental raid with the object of finding and bombing German warships in the Bight at night-time, in an effort to avoid the heavy casualties of recent daylight raids. Two served as reconnaissance planes and eighteen as the bombing force; but a recall signal was sent because of fog, in which one Wellington crashed in England and another was lost at sea. The strategy was not instantly repeated, but that sortie became historically important for being Britain’s first mass night-time raid of the war.

  For British planes to approach the Heligoland ‘hornet’s nest’ required great daring. High on the cliffs was a ‘Freya’ radar installation, with a range of 130km. It stood near the lofty six-storey, anti-aircraft artillery observation centre known as the Red Tower. The highest point on the island, it even overshadowed the lighthouse, and directed the fire of the antiaircraft batteries, including those on Sandy Island, called the ‘Hermann-Goering-flak’. To the Germans it had always seemed likely that air raids would come from the west. But on 21 May 1941 there occurred an audacious attack which the islanders still speak of with awe. Utterly unexpectedly, six Blenheim bombers escorted by fighters in search of warships in the harbour approached Heligoland from the north, the island’s ‘blind’ side. Racing towards the island at wave-top height, under the radar, they reached it undetected. At the last moment they climbed just enough to soar over the cliffs at the Lange Anna and then roared low over the astonished anti-aircraft positions and on to the harbour. Hitting three small ships and some jetties there they also reportedly machine-gunned the town.

  A daring combined forces plan was formulated at the Admiralty in early February 1940 to send a naval force of four destroyers and three motor torpedo boats (MTBs), based in Harwich, to undertake offensive operations against enemy destroyers in Heligoland’s anchorages and the south-west part of the Bight at a suitable time during 8–15 February 1940. Operation ‘JB’ was intended to involve an air cover escort of Blenheims flying from Martlesham Heath, but as they could only be guaranteed to be present some of the time, the vulnerability of the MTBs to German air attack led to the scheme being cancelled on the advice of the RAF. The plan was devised by Ian Fleming.

  By 1943 aircraft of the US 8th Air Force, stationed in Norfolk, were carrying out high-altitude daylight raids against Heligoland. Flying at around 26,000ft, out of range of the anti-aircraft guns, the aircraft involved were from the 91st and 303rd Bombardment Groups. Serving with the latter on one such raid was the celebrated B-17 ‘Memphis Belle’, about which William Wyler made a documentary and Harry Connick later starred in an award-winning movie. One objective of these attacks was assumed to be the three huge U-boat shelters which had appeared in the harbour. They were some 485ft long, with reinforced flat concrete roofs 14ft thick, and aerial reconnaissance photographs had shown that their construction was already in progress in 1940. By autumn of the following year they were complete, and painted with contrasting tones and shapes in order to break up the appearance of the flat surfaces. However, a confidential Air Ministry report entitled Heligoland: Submarine Basin, written on 30 October 1944, stated that: ‘Since the port was first photographed on 5.9.40 no U-boats have been seen in the harbour.’ This message is repeated in its conclusion: ‘No U-boats have ever been photographed in the harbour, but E/R boats have been seen on several occasions.’6

  Thus it is all the more surprising that the decision was taken to make a quite extraordinary top-secret attack on these apparently unused facilities. The means to do so had been devised by an American Air Force officer, General Carl ‘Tooey’ Spaatz. Desperate to find a way to attack the underground bunkers where Hitler’s V-1 rockets were being produced, he evolved a method of flying large military aircraft, in effect crude guided missiles, by remote control. His technique, codenamed ‘Project Aphrodite’, involved two aircraft, one of them pilotless. Packed with explosives, this would be crashed into the target. The second aircraft would fly nearby and control the ‘bomber’ by radio. A television camera in the aircraft’s nose enabled the ‘bomber’ to be directed accurately to its target. The ‘bomber’ plane took off conventionally, the pilot baling out long before it crashed. The US Army and Air Force favoured using radio-controlled B-17 planes, and started using them on 4 August 1944. The US Navy favoured using B-24s, but with two pilots; their very first US Aphrodite bomber pilot was Lt Joseph Kennedy jnr, the elder brother of John F. Kennedy.

  Joseph Kennedy’s assigned target has usually been assumed to have been the Heligoland U-boat shelter, the three entrances to which were only 65ft wide and just 45ft high, with heavy torpedo nets at water level. At 6pm on 12 August 1944 his converted B-24, ‘Zootsuit Black’, took to the air from Dunkeswell airfield in East Anglia. As the plane headed towards Heligoland, Kennedy prepared to bale out but first he needed to activate the remote control mechanism. Reportedly, as he did so the B-24, packed with 18,435lb of Torpex high explosive, accidentally detonated, blowing itself to smithereens. Kennedy was killed instantly. There are some doubts as to where this explosion took place, whether it was over England, the North Sea or near the island itself. Even now there are Heligolander eyewitnesses who emphatically recall, although they are unclear as to the date, a huge explosion when a lone Allied bomber inexplicably hit the waters of the harbour.

  Undeterred, the US Navy made at least two other Aphrodite attacks. One took place in September 1944 near the airfield barracks on the tiny Sandy Island and was carefully analysed by British Air Intelligence. It devastated a massive area – some 72,700 sq. yards. The other occurred on 15 October 1944 when a pilotless bomber laden with an 18,435lb Torpex charge was crashed into the Lower Town, causing the destruction of an estimated 24,600 sq. yards of non-military property. The effects of the explosion were of much interest to the Armaments Department of Britain’s Ministry of Home Security, which soon put together a detailed and highly classified report entitled Incident at Heligoland.7 There were certain indications that the explosion in the town was not the consequence of an overshoot of the U-boat shelters but a deliberate experiment (on the entirely domestic and commercial buildings of the Heligolanders) and the report concluded: ‘It is noted that no existing High Explosive load on an existing aircraft could demolish more than about half this area.’ Another intriguing possibility is that the real target of this attack, and of that which Joseph Kennedy had embarked upon, was the Biological Institute of Heligoland (BAH), the laboratories of which were severely damaged in the 15 October attack. It was near here that Werner Heisenberg had formulated his Nobel Prize-winning uncertainty principle – and having created a mathematical system known as matrix mechanics to explain the structure of the hydrogen atom, he was now busy in an underground bunker on the mainland as the head of Germany’s
secret mission to develop an atomic bomb.

  At this time there were already some who were turning their thoughts to the island’s future. In London one such character was barrister Dr W. Regendanz, who appears to have been acting on his own initiative. Most of his private research papers on the history of the island were destroyed in an air raid, but he was allowed to gather more information at the Foreign Office’s library and the Royal Geographical Society. On 8 September 1943 he wrote to the Under-Secretary of State at the Foreign Office, Anthony Eden, suggesting that in a postwar peace settlement Britain should, for strategic reasons, seek to annexe Heligoland and the island of Sylt. These, he claimed, were in a similar position: an air force based on Sylt would command the Skagerrak and Kattegat, just as Heligoland dominated the Kiel Canal; and should Russia in the future become master of the Baltic Sea it would be important for British policy to close the only exits to the North Sea – namely the Skagerrak and the Kaiser Wilhelm Canal.8 Significantly the reply from the Foreign Office thanking Regendanz for his letter was made on behalf of Eden by Frank Roberts, an official who would become prominent in the Heligoland story a few years hence. But in 1943 the Foreign Office wanted to keep Britain’s options open regarding the island, and when in parliament Lt Cdr Hutchinson MP asked Eden if Heligoland ought to revert to British sovereignty he was curtly put down with the excuse that ‘it was more a matter to be discussed at the Peace Conference than at Question Time in the House’.

  However, at around this time, Barnes Wallis, the co-designer of the Wellington bomber, was seeking to develop an idea he had had in 1941 for a weapon powerful enough to put out of action the underground V-1 plants as well as U-boat shelters such as those at Heligoland. Although he had figured that it could best be done with very large bombs weighing 10 tons which would have a camouflet (earthquake) effect, for a while his proposals were rejected. They were revived in 1943 and a smaller version of the 10-ton design, weighing 12,000lb, was built. Known as the ‘Tallboy’, it was test-detonated at Shoeburyness in what then seemed the largest explosion ever detonated at that range. It was heard 40 miles away at Chislehurst in Kent.9 The men entrusted to use these weapons in anger were from the famous 617 ‘Dam Buster’ Squadron, whose Lancaster bombers were converted to carry them (as later were those of 9 Squadron). An early success was their use to wreck the V-1 underground plant at St Leu d’Esserent, just north of Paris, where flying bombs were made. Another attack effectively demolished the major part of a massive concrete structure in northern France designed to house, underground, a number of 9-metre gun barrels set at a fixed elevation. This was one of Hitler’s secret weapons, intended to drench London with hundreds of tons of high explosive every week.

  By February 1945 the full 10-ton version, known as the ‘Grand Slam’, had been developed. Although the new weapon arrived untested from the manufacturers, it was successfully used by 617 Squadron to destroy the Bielefeld Viaduct near Hanover, a hitherto almost impossible target. Another success had been the attack on the battleship Tirpitz, which was hit in Altenfjord by Lancasters of 9 and 617 Squadrons dropping Tallboys on 12 November 1944. As their ship capsized and the icy waters rose, the doomed crew inside were heard singing Deutschland über Alles – the anthem composed under British occupation in Heligoland.

  By mid-April 1945 the war in Europe was only three weeks from ending. Canadian troops had overrun Friesland on 12 April 1945, and the British were advancing on Berlin. The strategic high command organisation, SHAEF, reckoned that as the Allied forces would want to enter the Elbe and Weser estuaries the heavy guns of Heligoland would need to be put out of action. They had been alerted to that possibility by Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, who on 23 March 1945, with regard to the German Bight islands, had written to the planning staff of his 21 Army Group: ‘By far the most important island is Heligoland which dominates the entrance to all the north-west German ports from Emden to Hamburg.’ Initially Montgomery wondered if the island might be starved into surrendering: ‘If Heligoland continues to hold out it appears that we shall have to starve it out (meaning delays in opening Hamburg for British maintenance, and Bremenhaven for US maintenance, and Cuxhaven for minesweeping).’ But wondering if an air attack might bring about the required result sooner he told the planning staff: ‘It would be appreciated if you could examine the possibility of reducing Heligoland from the air, should the island continue to hold and after the rest of North Germany has been overrun.’

  Another alternative considered had been the immobilisation of Heligoland’s heavy weaponry by means of naval gunfire. However in late March the Admiralty formed the view that the emplacement of artillery there was such, in its present form, that the island was impregnable to attack by the sea. But was it really necessary now for the Allies to bother with the island at all? This is highly ponderable because the maximum range of the 12in guns, the heaviest on the island, was only 12 miles, meaning there was just enough sea-room to allow safe access to the estuaries without needing to attack Heligoland. Moreover, it was never considered that it had not been essential to invade or bomb any of the German-occupied Channel Islands, either before, during or since the Normandy landings.

  On 31 March Bomber Command were asked by SHAEF to formulate a plan for ‘neutralising’ the guns of Heligoland. Sir Arthur ‘Bomber’ Harris and his colleagues, notably the Chief of the Air Staff Sir Charles Portal, had reason to relish an opportunity to attack Heligoland. After all, the tiny island had brought down the Hampdens and subsequently countless other Allied planes in its capacity as a watchtower. British Intelligence believed the island was an outstation of the ‘X system’ network that guided German military aircraft, and it had also given many warnings of imminent Allied raids on the mainland. Even now islanders recall how the German military used to look up in the sky, note the number and altitude of Allied bombers, and report where they were heading. On 4 April Bomber Command recommended a two-phase attack, initially using masses of conventional bombs to knock out the forty or so flak guns, then dropping Tallboys and Grand Slams to destroy the big guns. Accepting Bomber Command’s plan on 16 April, SHAEF ordered that the mission should make ready to proceed.

  Unusually, word from the Allies reached the island that some intensive bombing was due to begin. The message from London was that if the garrison surrendered, Heligoland would be spared. The islanders certainly did not want their island to be extensively bombed and two men in particular, hotelier Eric Friedrichs and roofer Georg Braun, wished to make sure of it. There were a number of German soldiers on the island who also reckoned the time had come to put a halt to the fighting. Four of them met with Friedrichs and Braun to consider how to proceed. Should the surrender be forced by means of a rebellion and mutiny? Unfortunately these events coincided with the arrival of an SS detachment, sent to the island to halt any faltering in the garrison’s resolve to battle on. According to various Heligolanders who were there at the time, the conspirators were in the course of making their views known throughout the garrison when the plot came to the attention of the Gestapo and the island’s unpopular Military Commandant, Kapitan Roeggeler, an ardent Nazi. Action was swift and brutal. The six ringleaders were rounded up and arrested, then taken across to the coastal fortifications at Cuxhaven. There, after a summary interrogation, all of them were condemned to be executed, and were then shot.

  Thus the white flag that the British had ordered to be hoisted over Heligoland by noon on 18 April never did appear. Readying themselves for the expected attack, the islanders made for the deep underground air-raid shelters set aside for civilians near the cliff-side staircase on the eastern side of the Oberland. Early that afternoon the sirens sounded a warning, as they had done many times before during the war. But never had they foretold a raid more terrifying than this.

  The sky was cloudless, clear and bright, as a vast armada of nearly 1,000 aircraft – mostly Lancaster and Halifax bombers – approached the island at 18,000ft, accompanied by squadrons of long-range Spitfire and Mustang fi
ghters. The first to strike were twenty Mosquito pathfinders, which swooped in at low level to drop coloured smoke marker flares indicating the three aiming points: the North and South batteries on the main island and the Dune airfield. The RAF had sent 618 Lancasters and 332 Halifaxes to obliterate Heligoland and they rained down 4,953 tons of bombs on the island. Although fierce resistance was put up by the flak guns, which brought down three Halifaxes, it was remorselessly overwhelmed. Long before the later waves of bombers arrived, RAF crews could see huge columns of smoke rising from various parts of the island. A huge oil fire was burning at the south end, and elsewhere great fires were raging under clouds of smoke which drifted across the plateau.

  The bombs fell relentlessly for an hour and a quarter, and even now older islanders can vividly recall the horror of that raid. Even deep in the shelters the noise was tremendous. The bombs fell in systematic patterns, like giants’ footsteps getting closer and closer. As they approached, those who were not speechless with horror were screaming in terror. At one point the generators failed and all the lights went out, leaving them in total darkness. Almost without exception the Heligolanders thought they were going to die.

  When the civilians finally emerged from their refuge that afternoon, blinking in the sunshine, they could hardly take in the scene of total devastation. Their island was a crater-pitted moonscape. Virtually every building was so utterly destroyed that there was scarcely one stone left standing on another. Historic places such as the Villa Hoffman von Fallersleben were utterly wrecked, as were all the buildings for so long associated with British rule: the church with the model ship presented by a former governor; the Empress of India; Government House; and even the streets with English names. By a supreme irony the only building effectively remaining was the highest structure on the island – the anti-aircraft control centre, the Red Tower. Its survival became a prominent new addition to the island’s aura of indestructibility against the odds.