On 10 May 1940 the balloon went up. The German blitzkrieg advance into France began when enemy troops crossed the Dutch and Belgian frontiers. Their main thrust came in the south, through the Belgian Ardennes forest – which had been thought impassable to mechanised forces – and Luxembourg. General Heinz Guderian and his 19th Panzer Korps were heading for Sedan and the French moved their forces to confront this huge threat.
At noon on the 10th and acting on his own initiative, the British air commander, Air Marshal Barratt, ordered thirty-two Battles from Nos 12, 103, 105, 142, 150, 218 and 226 Squadrons to attack enemy troops advancing through Luxembourg. There would be no fighter escort and so the Battles were ordered to go in as low as 250ft and drop delayed-fuse bombs. Intense light flak and small arms fire accounted for the loss of thirteen of these aircraft and every one of the remainder sustained some degree of damage. It was while flying this operation that Flt Lt Bill Simpson from No 12 Squadron – of whom we shall hear more later – was shot down.
From No 150 Squadron four Battles were sent off at 15.30, in two sections of two aircraft each, to bomb a column of enemy troops on the Luxembourg to Echternach road. The first pair found the target but the second section led by Flt Lt Eric Parker could not and bombed a different column of troops – there was certainly no shortage of targets! Three of these aircraft were shot down. During the late afternoon, No 150 Squadron was again brought to thirty minutes’ readiness but, no doubt with much relief, no further operations materialised that day.
At 06.10 the next morning the war reached Écury with a bang. The airfield came under heavy aerial attack by between eighteen and twenty-four enemy bombers dropping an estimated 150 bombs from 12,000ft altitude. By the end of the raid the airfield had eighteen craters across it and the armoury tent and pyrotechnic store were set on fire and destroyed. Battle P2334 caught fire and was destroyed when its two 250lb bombs exploded. Battle P2335 sustained slight damage from flying fragments and five unexploded enemy bombs were littered around the northern edge of the field. That evening, in an effort to protect the aircraft, ‘B’ Flight’s eight Battles were flown to a satellite airfield at Vatry, a few miles away.
Fairey Battle JN-I, of No 150 Squadron, shot down near Sedan on 10 May 1940. (Andrew Thomas)
‘B’ Flight returned at 09.00 on the 12th and at 14.45 a section of three aircraft from the flight, led by Flt Lt Weeks, with Sgt Andrews and Plt Off Campbell-Irons as the pilots of the other two, took off to attack a mechanised column between Neufchâteau and Bertrik. At 15.25 the formation ran into very intense flak a mile east of Neufchâteau. Ian Campbell-Irons’ aircraft P2236 took a direct hit, exploded and crashed in flames just south of the town, killing him and his crew, Sgt Thomas Barker and LAC Reg Hinder. The two remaining aircraft found the target column a couple of miles west of Neufchâteau and dropping down to just 100ft, laid a stick of eight 250lb bombs with eleven-second delay fuses along its length. They both returned to base at 16.05 but one was badly damaged by gunfire and written off.
Just three days into the campaign, No 150 Squadron and indeed the whole AASF was taking heavy casualties in terms of men and machines. We should also remind ourselves that the French Air Force was heavily committed and suffering similarly badly. Early in the morning of the 13th the Germans reached Sedan, on the Meuse, and prepared to cross the river, which was perceived by the opposing French army as a strong defensive barrier – but they had never seen a strategy of the ferocity of blitzkrieg before! All through that day wave after wave of Stukas, Heinkels and Junkers Ju 88s of the Luftwaffe relentlessly pounded French positions across the river in one of the greatest air bombardments ever seen. Using pontoon bridges, by the middle of the afternoon Guderian’s 19th Panzer Korps had launched its river crossing operations at three points in the Sedan sector and had soon established a bridgehead on the other side. Now it needed to be consolidated and expanded in the thrust for the Channel. During the 13th, rumours began to spread among French forces that tanks were already across the river and had penetrated their lines. This was not the case but it triggered a piecemeal, badly co-ordinated French retreat that, when German tanks did actually cross a specially strengthened pontoon bridge during the night of the 13/14th, caused a catastrophic gap to appear in the weakened French front that was exploited by the Germans. Now facing defeat at Sedan, with all its implications for the enemy’s dash to the Channel, French Army Command urged the RAF to commit everything it had to stem the flow by destroying the bridges and pontoons on the River Meuse around the city. The RAF responded magnificently. It may have lacked effective aircraft but its aircrew were not found wanting. Alan Summerson was one of these men.
All that day and the next, enemy armour and infantry were seen massing in the area around Sedan – the sector in which No 150 Squadron operated – and (although figures for RAF losses on 14 May vary among historians) the situation was, in the words of aviation historian W.R. Chorley, ‘beyond retrieval’:
[14 May 1940] was a day calling for raw courage and those who flew into the cauldron at Sedan displayed a determination that won the respect of friend and foe alike. In the wake of what had happened in the fighting so far, no one now expected the Battles and Blenheims to turn the tide, but it would not be for want of trying.
The main weight of the Allied air attack [seventy-one bomber sorties] was pitched during the mid-afternoon and probably within the space of one hour, thirty-one Battles were shot down and the Blenheim squadrons were equally hard hit. By the end of that day at least forty-seven bombers were written off [and sixteen fighters were also lost]. Not surprisingly, a good percentage of the aircrew shot down were either killed or taken prisoner, but during the next few days, survivors of this desperate action arrived back with their units by various means and with miraculous tales to tell.
For No 150 Squadron, the 14th began at 04.00 when a half-section (two aircraft) was put on thirty minutes’ readiness and the remainder at three hours’ notice. Then at 05.45 a telephone message was received from Gp Capt Field at HQ requesting two half-sections to stand by for immediate take-off. ‘B’ Flight was alerted accordingly. At 06.30 Wing HQ rang through the target information: pontoon bridges over the Meuse, 1½ miles south of Sedan. At 07.35 the first pair took off: Plt Off Gulley and crew in L5524, and Plt Off Peacock-Edwards and crew in P2179. They encountered considerable light flak around Sedan and, despite taking hits, dive-bombed the pontoons from 4,000ft at 07.50 hours – the enemy was less than fifteen minutes away. Several explosions were seen but they did not hang about to assess the damage and landed back at 08.35. The second pair were airborne five minutes after the first. Sgt Beale in L5457 and Plt Off Long in K9483 attacked pontoon bridges west of Douzy but they, too, had to fly through an intense hail of flak, saw their bombs detonate on the target but could not assess the damage done. They landed back at 08.37.
Waiting around on the airfield must have been nerve-racking but Alan Summerson’s time for action came when a second operation was ordered for the afternoon. On that fateful day he was the gunner in Fairey Battle P5232, one of four aircraft – again operating in two pairs – detailed for another low-level attack on the bridges near Sedan. Take-off was at 15.18 and 15.24. Alan’s aircraft was first away and the other members of his crew were his usual pilot and observer, Flt Sgt George Barker and Sgt James Williams. The other aircraft in his section was that flown by Plt Off Posselt and the crews of the three were:
K9483 Plt Off Arthur Posselt; Sgt Donald Bowen; AC2 Norman Vano (18)
L4946 Fg Off John Ing; Sgt John Turner; AC1 William Nolan
P2182 Plt Off John Boon; Sgt Thomas Fortune; AC1 Sydney Martin
Not one of these four aircraft returned.
There was no time for recriminations or investigation. The German tide could not be held back and the next morning at 08.00, with the not-so-distant explosions ringing in their ears, those who remained at Écury-sur-Coole airfield were destroying any u/s aircraft and equipment while frantically packing lorries and traile
rs with stores and provisions for a rapid evacuation to Pouan airfield, No 150’s new base about 30 miles south. The convoy drove off at 09.30 and the nine serviceable Fairey Battles remaining flew over it en route to Pouan.
Alan Summerson’s pilot and observer were killed and he was the sole survivor among the crews of the four aircraft despatched. Although German light flak was deadly, he said later that his own Fairey Battle was brought down by gunfire from Bf 109 fighters. Due to its low altitude, the angle at which it crashed was fortunately quite shallow and it slithered along the ground before bursting into flames behind German lines, which were by now forming a huge salient to the west of the Meuse in front of Sedan.
This was the day that JG 53 wreaked havoc far and wide over the Sedan front. The whole Jagdgeschwader was committed and all those pilots who had crossed swords with No 150 Squadron back in September 1939 played a part in the carnage it suffered this day. In the heat of a battle on this sort of scale it is impossible to match losses accurately with claims, and this battle was particularly ferocious. JG 53 believed that – among forty-five claims made for all types (including eighteen French) – in the space of thirty-five minutes between 16.20 and 16.55, they shot down fourteen Fairey Battles near Sedan. Among the Luftwaffe claimants were Rolf Pingel, Franz Kaiser and Ignaz Prestele. It will be noted later that Alan said he had shot down two German fighters. Verifying that claim is impossible now, although it has to be said that there are two or three German losses on that date not fully accounted for. Interestingly, one of these relates to the renowned ace Werner Molders of JG 53, who is reported to have been shot down during the aerial melee around Sedan on 14 May. He was uninjured and back in action the next day. Who knows, maybe Alan bagged himself a ‘big fish’?
LAC Summerson not only escaped from this crash but also survived the war and remained in the RAF until shortly before his death in 1976. During his lifetime he spoke very little, even to his family, about his horrific experiences in France in 1940, but with the help of his logbook and reminiscences in the graphic autobiography of Flt Lt William Simpson DFC, another brave airman from that ill-fated campaign, Alan’s story emerged into the light.
Bill Simpson and Alan Summerson lay in adjacent beds for many months in a number of French hospitals, both suffering from severe burns sustained in their respective aeroplane crashes that left them in a very poor state of health. Indeed, it was said that when the Germans became aware of their existence they did not bother about the two men or consider placing them in a POW hospital, because they felt both would not survive their injuries. In retrospect a POW hospital might have resulted in better medical treatment and possibly repatriation on medical grounds.
Bill Simpson, a pilot with No 12 Squadron who had been shot down on 10 May, was terribly burned and recalled in his memoirs, One of Our Pilots is Safe (Hamish Hamilton, 1942):
One day, while I was in a hospital in Bar-le-Duc [30 miles south of Verdun and ahead of the advancing Germans], the CO of 150 Squadron came in. He was paying a visit to one of his air gunners, LAC Summerson, who had his face, back, both hands and arms badly burned and a gunshot wound in one leg. I saw Alan Summerson for the first time as we lay on stretchers in the ward, waiting to be taken by ambulance to the railway station. His dark hair was unkempt, his face black and red in patches – scab and mercurochrome – and his lower eyelids and his bottom lip were drawn down.
The squadron commander told Alan that things were getting ‘dicey’ and he had to move his squadron to a new airfield further south and would not be able to visit him again. When the hospital staff also told the two wounded airmen that they were to be ‘evacuated’ they realised there must be a large-scale retreat going on. Bill Simpson recalled they were put on to a hospital train and did not see each other again until they reached the Hôpital Militarie Carnot in Chalons-sur-Saône (60 miles north of Lyon). There they were taken on stretchers into a small room and were so weak that the doctors gave them an injection to stimulate the action of their hearts and put them both on plasma drips. Most of the time they lay still, too worn out to talk, and it was only at night, when sleep would not come, that they chatted at length. Alan described his home in Lincolnshire, and told Bill about swimming in the summer and skating on the Fens in winter; of rough shooting and hay-making, and particularly about his interest in ornithology.
Despite the hospital being full to overflowing and the severe shortage of many medical supplies, both Englishmen were fussed over by their nurse, Madame Gentille, who made sure they were well fed. There were also many visits from local people, including children, to whom the English airmen were something of a novelty. They brought gifts of fruit and flowers, and chatted to the men, completely ignoring the horrific nature and smell of their burns.
Dressings on their injuries were changed every three days but the doctor’s methods in this process were somewhat crude and exceedingly painful. Bill Simpson said Alan’s hands were particularly bad and waiting for his own turn, he could see that the pain from changing the dressings made Alan drip with sweat all over his body. His fingers were a mess of scarlet and because the bandages were not soaked off, blood ran freely from them all over the rubber sheet on the bed.
During those long days in hospital, with scraps of news bringing only tales of more retreat and the Germans about to enter Paris, Bill Simpson was able to draw out more of Alan’s story.
Alan told him he was the gunner in one of four Fairey Battles carrying out a raid against a concentration of German troops halted in a valley near Sedan. While they were in the middle of their bombing run they were attacked by a swarm of Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighters. The pilots carried on with the bombing run while Alan and the three other gunners in the formation dealt with the fighters. The 109s came in very close, for they knew that the Battles were easy meat – slow and ill-defended in the rear. Alan was hit in the leg and the observer sitting between him and the pilot was killed, but Alan claimed to have shot down two Messerschmitts, which he said crashed in flames. His aircraft suddenly struck the ground behind the German lines and he was thrown out some distance clear of the aircraft. When he got up he found that, apart from the wound in his right leg, he was not badly hurt. Stumbling back to the Battle, which was now in flames, his one idea was to save the pilot trapped in the cockpit. Climbing on to the wing and standing in the middle of the flames, he dragged out the pilot, but Flt Sgt Barker was already dead and now he himself was severely burned. Determined not to fall into the hands of the Germans, Alan headed for some woods not far away. His leg was bleeding profusely and skin hung in loose shreds from his face and hands, but he reached the wood and lay in hiding until nightfall.
For two more days and nights Alan was on the run in territory already largely held by the enemy and he saw several German armoured car and tank units. He hid in houses and cafes that had been deserted by their owners in the face of the advancing army. Once, while he was upstairs in a bedroom, he heard German soldiers talking in the cafe below. He stumbled out of bed and hid beneath it for hours while, in the room below, German soldiers made merry with the cafe’s stock of wine. Luckily the Germans never went upstairs or they could not have failed to see him. Eventually, however, they rolled out into the night and left him undisturbed.
All the time he was in great pain from the burns to his face, hands and back, and from his wounded leg. For food he managed to find in the houses bits of cereal and stale bread, which he soaked in wine to make it soft enough for his damaged lips. He was nearly blind, too, but in spite of his injuries Alan managed to walk almost 25 miles – fortunately in the right direction – and on the third night he stumbled across a French patrol. Challenged by a sentry whom he could barely see, he answered in French that he was an English airman. He was told to advance with his hands above his head, but this was awkward for him because, having lost his belt and with his braces broken, he could only support his trousers by pressing his arms to his sides. So, when he walked towards the astonished sentry, his trousers fell down
around his ankles! The soldiers helped him to their patrol post where they laid him on a pile of coats and gave him brandy. It was only then that he became aware of his exhaustion and the greatness of his pain and he was eventually taken by ambulance to the hospital near Verdun.
They Spread Their Wings Page 20