In August 1944 the names of Mortain and Falaise would become synonymous with the Typhoon and that period might even be seen as the zenith of the Typhoon’s chequered and much-maligned career. At the beginning of August, following the devastating effects on the German army of a series of huge air raids by Allied heavy bombers, the British and Canadian armies had at last fought their way through Caen and were now south of the city, poised to push down the road to Falaise, 16 miles distant. The big British push, Operation Totalize, kicked off on 7 August; the same day as Operation Luttich, a German counter-attack – sometimes referred to as the Mortain counter-attack – began. This latter was an attempt by four Panzer divisions, at the western end of the German line of battle, to head for Avranches, through Mortain and cut off Gen Patton’s American forces that had broken through to Le Mans. Providing air support for the 21st Army Group, No 2 TAF was brought in to attack the German Panzers around Mortain, and with the ‘cab rank’ and VCP (Visual Control Post) system working well at squadron strength, 294 Typhoon sorties were flown, resulting in the German attack being crushed with little progress made. No 123 Wing’s RP Typhoons knocked out eighty-seven tanks that afternoon.
By 10 August, Totalize in the eastern sector and Luttich in the western sector had both run out of steam. This, however, left the majority of the German Seventh Army and a large Panzer Group in a pocket, almost surrounded by the Americans from the west and south, and the British, Canadians and Poles from the north and east. There was a diminishing ‘mouth’ to this pocket, located south-east of Falaise.
The Typhoon squadrons had a field day. On the 10th, No 609 Squadron mounted three operations at squadron strength, hitting tanks and motorised troop transport. Walter Dring led the last one at 18.30, going after some tanks in the Vassey area. Dring was airborne again the next day, when the squadron attacked a chateau and other HQ buildings near St Quentin, leaving them blazing from the effects of the rocket attack. Flying sorties almost every day, Walter’s logbook notes:
7th. One flamer, one AFV [Armoured Fighting Vehicle], one carrier. 8th. Weather very bad. 9th. Wing total for day: 16 tanks, 85 MET [Mixed Enemy Transport]. 9th. Lost Tolworthy and Thuesby. 10th. Very heavy flak, no tanks visible. 12th. Blew up ammunition trucks, wizard sight. 13th. Clobbered two Tigers. 14th. Two smokers. 17th. Destroyed 17 trucks. 18th. Two trucks destroyed.
Realising the predicament they were in, pressed on all sides and harried constantly from the air, on the 11th the Germans began a major retreat. They made an enormous effort to extract the 7th Army and the Panzers through the mouth of the pocket near Falaise, around Trun and Chambois – the location that became known as the ‘Falaise Gap’ – and escape to and across the River Seine.
On 12 August, heavy and medium bombers pounded transportation routes out of the Falaise pocket and, by that evening, German manpower and equipment was in full, almost panic-stricken, flight. Thousands of tanks, half-tracks, infantry lorries, petrol and ammunition vehicles, and horse-drawn transports were all being squeezed into an ever-narrowing area measuring about 7 miles by 6 miles. The RP and bomber Typhoons of No 2 TAF hammered the tightly packed roads trying to close the gap. Hobbling on crutches at the base airfield, Desmond Scott wrote:
The withering, terrifying power of our fighter-bombers and rocket Typhoons began scorching the battle area with methodical ferocity. The Falaise Pocket became the chopping block and graveyard of Hitler’s 7th Army. Dring and the No 123 Wing squadrons blasted their way through blazing hot days of maximum activity. The Falaise Gap was closed on 20 August but elements of armoured formations outside the pocket, together with the remains of the German tanks inside, tried desperately to force it open again. This situation caused the [Allied] armies some concern and 123 Wing was called in to tidy it up. It proved to be one of the finest close-support operations in the history of No 84 Group.
This was Walter Dring in his element!
On 18 August a fierce ground battle developed near Chambois, but Canadian troops linked up with the Poles and closed the mouth of the Pocket – although it was still a tenuous situation and the Germans frantically tried to force an opening again. By the 20th, the enemy counter-attacked with tanks and fighting became severe around Vimoutiers, particularly against the Canadian 4th Armoured Division and the Polish Armoured Brigade, who were just 2,000 yards apart on opposite sides of the River Vie and found themselves outnumbered and in a difficult situation. The recommendation for an award of a decoration to Walter Dring, who had by this time flown 245 operational fighter sorties totalling 300 hours, stated:
The position of our troops was critical and air support was requested. During the confused land battles of the previous two days, friendly aircraft had unfortunately attacked our own troops on a number of occasions and this target was accepted with some misgivings. Wing Commander W. Dring, the Wing Commander Operations of No 123 Wing, was asked whether he regarded it as a practicable operation for RP Typhoons. He undertook it without hesitation and asked if he could lead all the squadrons of his Wing in the attack. Permission was given and orders issued for the attack, which was carried out, in spite of low cloud and intense flak, with faultless precision and timing.
The success of this heavy attack, in which thirteen tanks were destroyed and eleven damaged, carried out in such close proximity to our own troops, did much to restore the Army’s confidence in air support and was instrumental in neutralising the enemy counter-attack. No 123 Wing’s consistent success in ground attack operations with RP Typhoons is very largely due to Wing Commander Dring’s careful planning, thorough briefing and dashing leadership.
At this most crucial point Walter Dring arrived at the head of thirty-two RP Typhoons from Nos 164, 183, 198 and 609 Squadrons. About 100 German tanks and armoured cars were rolling out of a wood and Dring’s formation caught them as they emerged. Plt Off W.T. Lawson, one of the attacking pilots, recalled: ‘I was flying number two to Dring. He was first to fire his rockets then he orbited the wood giving instructions throughout the attack.’ They claimed seventeen ‘flamers’ and many damaged.
Walter Dring was awarded an immediate DSO and it is well known that the jaws of the trap (the Pocket) remained firmly closed. Inside the Pocket the Germans left behind 1,300 tanks, 1,500 field guns, 20,000 vehicles and 400,000 troops, half of whom were taken prisoner. Remnants of the German 7th Army retreated across the Seine as best they could, harried constantly by No 2 TAF’s Typhoons. This action in effect marked the end of the Normandy campaign; Paris was liberated a week later and the advance towards the River Rhine began. Walter Dring’s star was at its zenith, too.
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No 123 Wing’s first move from B7 was to airfield B23 at Morainville, south of Evreux, on 3 September, but three days later it made a great leap to airfield B35 at Baromesnil, inland from Le Treport. On the 11th another leap took it to airfield B53 at Merville, near Armentières, a permanent airfield with long concrete runways, recently vacated by the Luftwaffe, where it would be joined by No 135 Wing. In less than a week No 123 Wing had leapfrogged from Bayeux almost to the Belgian border. During this period the four squadrons were still engaged on operations at the call of the army over a wide area, some of these involving ops against German enclaves in the ports of Le Havre, Boulogne, Calais and Dunkirk.
By this time Desmond Scott, his plaster cast removed, was back in full working and flying order and he and Walter Dring – together with their squadrons – were working well as a team in this frantic race to keep up with the army. Desmond Scott spoke of their relationship:
After weathering the triumphs and tragedies of Normandy and the blistering heat of battle, Dring had become my brother. We had always got on well, even back in our Tangmere days, but now we were veterans, drawn closer by the forces of survival. We had, in the previous four years, lived through a thousand lifetimes. We had become the products of the battle skies and of the cold, hard facts of war. During the day we did not see much of each other for, unlike the Spitfire squadrons, Typhoons n
ormally ferreted around in the battle zone in small formations and it was a full-time job for [Dring] conducting the many briefings that were part of our close-support operations. In front of the squadron personnel I was always ‘Sir’ and he ‘Dring’ but in the evenings, when flying was finished, we would meet in my caravan to discuss the day’s activities on the same level. Then he became ‘Dringo’ and I ‘Scottie’. A drink or two and [Dringo] seemed to finish back on his Lincolnshire farm. I, too, had spent most of my childhood surrounded by sheep and horses and we talked about farming well into the night. It diverted our minds from the menacing skies, the mud of Merville and the thousand fears of an unknown future.
During mid-September 1944, much to the disgust of its commanders, No 123 Wing was not called upon to provide close support in the battles raging around Arnhem. However, the wing became heavily involved in ‘clearing-out’ operations against the German army bottled up in the Antwerp area around the Scheldt. Antwerp was vital to the Allies and it was captured as early as 4 September, but shipping could not be brought into the port until the Germans were removed from Walcheren – and the fortifications there were strong, with well-camouflaged heavy coastal guns and huge bunkers. First the wing was asked to provide ground attack support for the Canadian army clearing out the Breskens ‘pocket’ opposite Flushing. This ground objective was achieved by 22 October and gave the army a point from which to launch an attack on the strategic Walcheren Island, a tough nut to crack.
While all this was going on, No 123 Wing moved to B67 Ursel, west of Ghent, on 29 October. The amphibious assault on the island began on 1 November, but at Ursel airfield, like all the other No 2 TAF airfields, No 123 Wing was grounded by fog. Reports filtered through about the seaborne forces encountering great resistance and being desperate for air support. George Bell’s recollection of this situation was that Group HQ telephoned Gp Capt Scott to tell him air support ops were being called off and Scott replied that he was ‘not going to leave those poor bastards with no air support … and 123 Wing will be over Walcheren in the next hour or two’. And it was. Scott and Dring constantly monitored the weather situation and when they walked along their low-lying runway, the fog seemed thinner. They knew they could take off directly towards the destination and that the flight path to the target area would be at sea level, so Scott decided to risk it, hoping visibility would be good enough along the route. He called a full wing operation; everyone to fly! Desmond Scott briefed his wing to operate in two formations; he would lead the first formation of two squadrons and when airborne would decide whether or not to continue. If he did not call an abort, Walter Dring would take off leading the other two squadrons.
Scott’s formation took off and within a few minutes found the cloud had lifted to 500ft and visibility improved. He was soon joined by Dring and when the four squadrons arrived in the target area they took up a patrol line off the coast between West Kapelle and Flushing. Scenes of devastation could be seen below, with broken vessels, bodies floating in the water and soldiers wandering around. German heavy guns were still keeping up a deadly bombardment and Desmond Scott recalled:
It was a moment or two before the well-camouflaged heavy coastal batteries barked out their messages of death and we could pinpoint the seat of the trouble. But immediately we saw their flashes we answered them back and every time a gun fired, four Typhoons set upon it. As though stirred by the scene below, each pilot pressed home his attack almost into the gun barrels. Rockets exploded against the steel and concrete, sometimes in pairs, sometimes in salvoes. Flak flew in all directions, but we raked the flak guns with our cannon fire. We kept the pressure on and before long, the guns along the southern perimeter of the island ceased to fire.
The weather cleared even more during the day, allowing No 123 Wing and the others of No 84 Group to mount many more attacks on fortifications in other parts of the island. Walcheren was taken within days and the seaway into Antwerp was no longer under threat. No 123 Wing’s contribution on that critical day was acknowledged in a signal from Admiral Ramsey, the Allied Naval Commander-in-Chief Europe: ‘The timely and well-executed support by your rocket firing Typhoons when 80% of the landing craft were out of action, undoubtedly was a vital factor in turning the scales to our advantage.’
No 123 Wing was on the move again and on 25 November took up residence at B77 Gilze-Rijen, between Breda and Tilburg, Holland. This former Luftwaffe base had two long concrete runways with plenty of hard standings and well-built permanent domestic buildings, which must have been a welcome change from living under canvas. At that time, though, the airfield was only 12 miles from the front line and also under the flight path of V–1s being fired at Antwerp – someone counted as many as 148 of these noisy beasts flying over the airfield in a single day!
Apart from the usual ‘cab rank’ sorties in support of the Canadian army, Typhoon operations at this time were mainly directed against German mechanised units and supply depots across the River Maas, together with attacks on the V–1 launch sites themselves. On 28 November 1944 General Eisenhower visited the wing and personally thanked all the pilots for their efforts in the drive from Normandy. Winter was setting in hard; snow was falling and with temperatures plummeting, everyone hoped that No 123 Wing would see out the bad weather in the comparative comfort of Gilze-Rijen. Field Marshal von Rundstedt, however, had other ideas.
During a period of atrocious weather that, significantly, had already grounded Allied aircraft for many days – and would continue to do so – on 16 December the 5th, 6th and 7th German Panzer armies began a massive counter-offensive in the Ardennes region that would become known as the Battle of the Bulge. Walter himself did not fly for a month prior to 25 December, when he logged twenty minutes: ‘Aerobatics (workout).’
General ‘Ike’ Eisenhower (centre) meets No 123 Wing CO, Gp Capt Desmond Scott (extreme right) and Wg Cdr Walter Dring (second from the right, with hands behind back) at B77 Gilze-Rijen, 28 November 1944. (John & Susan Rowe, Dring Collection)
Without air support, Allied forces were overrun or pushed back towards Brussels and in the direction of Antwerp. On 28 December, No 123 Wing was ordered to move 80 miles south immediately and take over airfield A84 at Chièvres from the Americans. Chièvres was 30 miles south-west of Brussels and from there, No 123 Wing was to give close air support to the American army. What with snow, ice and fog, it took until 31 December for the move to be completed. Not all the wing’s Typhoons could move to the new base because, according to Desmond Scott, twenty-two had to be left at Gilze as unserviceable due to repairs or normal maintenance checks.
Poor weather favoured the German army initially, but with the prospect of it improving, and with it the return of the Allied ground attack fighters, the Luftwaffe was mobilised en masse to mount what became a last-ditch, pre-emptive strike. Due to mounting resistance and with its supply lines stretched to breaking point, German ground forces were about to grind to a halt. If the Allied air forces could take to the sky, the whole German offensive would be in serious danger.
The pre-emptive air strike, code-named Operation Bodenplatte, was a tactical operation to be carried out by fighters and fighter bombers of the Luftwaffe against Allied airfields. The objective was to cripple Allied air forces and facilities in Belgium, Holland and northern France at a time when the Battle of the Bulge was in danger of stagnating. Launched on 1 January 1945, it was planned originally to coincide with the start of the counter-offensive but was delayed by the unsuitable weather for ground attack operations.
Among seventeen airfield targets was Gilze-Rijen. Over 1,000 German aircraft, mainly Fw 190s and Bf 109s, were committed to the operation. Eighty-one enemy aircraft from JG 3 and KG 51 were tasked to attack the airfields of Eindhoven and Gilze-Rijen and they hit these at dawn on the 1st. Fortunately for No 123 Wing, most of its ‘birds had flown’ to Chièvres, but Eindhoven was brim-full, with around 300 aircraft and vast stores, and bore the brunt of the attack. The wings there lost twenty-six Typhoons destroye
d and thirty damaged, plus five Spitfires destroyed. Gilze-Rijen escaped lightly, since the Typhoons left on the airfield were well dispersed, and although the attackers had the freedom to make several firing passes over the airfield, only two aircraft were destroyed, while the anti-aircraft defences claimed three of the enemy.
The outcome of the ground battle is now a matter of history and by 12 January the pressure on No 123 Wing was off, allowing Gp Capt Scott to consider returning to Gilze-Rijen. In the almost three weeks his wing was at Chièvres, only five days were fit for flying, but during that time it was business as usual for the RP Typhoons as they hit enemy tanks and motor transport hard. Snow conditions were so bad at Chièvres as to require bulldozers to clear the runway and this left huge banks of snow, 8ft high, stretching down each side of the runway, ‘making it like a white-walled passageway’.
By January 1945 Walter Dring had been a pilot for three years, during which time he had accumulated 1,100 flying hours, of which almost 500 were operational. On 13 January, having been unable to get any aircraft into the air for some days, Walter sent up Flt Lt Prosser on a weather check to see if it was clear enough to send all four squadrons back to Gilze-Rijen. On his return Prosser reported that it was ‘no joy’ and the route was completely socked in by a wide front with cloud down to ground level. According to Desmond Scott this is what happened next:
I accepted Prosser’s report but Dring was not convinced and asked if he could go and take a look for himself. Perhaps there was a way round the weather. In front of his pilots I could not refuse his request, but I did not want to embarrass Prosser. Dring had been grounded for so long, I think he simply wanted to extend his wings. I said he could have a look if he so wished, but that I was satisfied with Prosser’s report. It was the same story: we would have to wait until the weather cleared.
They Spread Their Wings Page 15