Brigadier General Fred L Anderson commanding VIIIth Bomber Command flew as an observer on the next raid, on the night of 25/26 July, when bad weather over north Germany prevented all but a handful of Mosquitoes bombing Hamburg. Window was still effective so 705 heavies were dispatched to Essen. Canadian Flight Lieutenant ‘Rick’ Garvey’s crew on 83 Squadron had the honour of flying the American general on Q-Queenie. The Group Navigation Officer, Squadron Leader Price, also went along on the veteran Lancaster with over 60 bomb symbols painted below the cockpit. A nude female kneeling in front of a bomb, just aft of the front turret had been painted out and replaced by a red devil (Mephistopheles – to whom Faust sold his soul in German legend), thumbing its nose, dancing in the flames with the motto: ‘Devils of the Air’ underneath.
Eric Phillips, a Stirling rear-gunner on XV Squadron at Mildenhall, Suffolk recalls:
There was full cloud over the target so Path Finders dropped a flare outside the target and the navigator gave the pilot a course on a timed run from the flare and dropped the bombs through cloud. The navigator asked me to watch out for the flare. Within seconds the flare was dropped and just as I reported this, a Ju 88 came in from the port quarter firing two cannons. My rear turret and the starboard outer engine were hit and set on fire. The pilot, thinking the starboard wing was also on fire, ordered bail out. Then the engine fell away from the aircraft and the order to bail out was cancelled. The Stirling lost height from 18,000 down to 8,000. The bombs were dropped at this height in the Essen area and the aircraft then made a safe journey home with me keeping watch from the astrodome, as the rear turret was unserviceable.
On approach to Essen Johnnie the Wolf, a 76 Squadron Halifax piloted by Flight Lieutenant Colin McTaggart ‘Mick’ Shannon DFC RAAF was hit by flak. The port inner engine appeared to have been damaged by shrapnel as vibration set in. Shortly after bombing, at 17,000 feet, the propeller on the port inner became uncontrollable, eventually separating from the engine and smashing into the fuselage. The impact caused a loss of control and when Shannon brought Johnnie the Wolf back to level flight it was discovered that Sergeant E W Waterman, the mid-upper gunner had bailed out. Waterman, a professional poacher in civilian life, who normally flew with the ‘A’ Flight commander but who was filling in for a sick man, was taken prisoner. Shannon made it back to Holme and bellied Johnnie the Wolf in without injury to the crew.9 Twenty-six bombers (or 3.7 per cent of the force) failed to return, of which, 19 were destroyed by night fighters.10 Q-Queenie returned safely to Wyton with General Anderson who also went to Hamburg two nights later with Garvey’s crew in the same aircraft.11
In all, 627 aircraft out of 705 despatched dropped 2,032 tons of bombs upon Essen. Harris was not exaggerating when he said that ‘they inflicted as much damage on the Krupps works as in all previous attacks put together’. Fifty-one other industrial buildings were damaged with another 83 heavily damaged. ‘The raid’ recorded Goebbels in his diary ‘caused a complete stoppage of production in the Krupps works. Speer is much concerned and worried.’ The areas particularly damaged included, in addition to the Krupps works, Altenessen, Segeroth, Borbeck, Holsterhausen, Rüttenscheid, Frohnhausen, Delbig and Vogelheim. The fire services of the city had to deal with 270 large and 250 small fires; 340 people lost their lives, 1,128 were wounded and 35,144 rendered homeless while 1,508 houses were destroyed and 1,083 badly damaged. On the morning after the raid, Doktor Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach came down to his office from the Villa Hügel, where he lived, cast one look upon the blazing remnants of his works and fell down in a fit. This, since he had not recovered from it, saved him in 1947 from being put on trial as a war criminal.
Harris was intent on sending his bombers back to Hamburg for another major strike, as Eric Phillips, recalls. ‘The governor, Bomber Harris, addressed us. He said, ‘I feel sure that a further two or three raids on Hamburg, then probably a further six raids on Berlin and the war will finish.’
On the night of 27/28 July 787 aircraft followed a longer route out to Hamburg and back to include a longer flight over the North Sea with the intention of confusing the German JLOs as to the intended target. This meant that each aircraft had to carry a smaller bomb load than normal and so it was decided to include a higher proportion of incendiaries than usual. A carpet of bombs of unimaginable density caused the almost complete destruction of six districts of the city and of parts of two others. A total of 2,417 tons of bombs was dropped on the districts to the east of the Alster, which included Hammerbrook, Hohenfelde, Borgfelde and others by 739 bombers and a firestorm was started by a combination of the high temperature prevailing (about 30°C at 6 o’clock in the evening). Fires started in the densely built up working class districts of Hammerbrook and those at Hamm and Borgfelde joined together and then became one gigantic area of fire with air being brought into it with the force of a storm. The firestorm raged for about three hours in an area measuring only two miles by one mile, which received between 550–600 bomb loads and only died down when there was nothing left to burn. About 16,000 multi-storeyed apartments were destroyed and 40,000 people died; most of them by carbon monoxide poisoning.
The damage was ‘gigantic’, reported Generalleutnant Kehrl, the Police President and Air Protection Leader of the city:
Before half an hour had passed, the districts upon which the weight of the attack fell, and which formed part of the crowded dock and port area, where narrow streets and courts abounded, were transformed into a lake of fire covering an area of 22 square kilometres. The effect of this was to heat the air to a temperature which at times was estimated to approach 1,000° centigrade. A vast suction was in this way created so that the air stormed through the streets with immense force, bearing upon it sparks, timber and roof beams and thus spreading the fire still further and further till it became a typhoon such as had never before been witnessed and against which all human resistance was powerless. Trees three feet thick were broken off or uprooted, human beings were thrown to the ground or flung alive into the flames by winds which exceeded 150mph. [The trunks of strong trees split and broke, younger trees were bent to the ground like willow rods. Seventy thousand of Hamburg’s 100,000 trees were lost to this storm.] The panic-stricken citizens knew not where to turn. Flames drove them from the shelters but high-explosive bombs sent them scurrying back again. Once inside, they were suffocated by carbon-monoxide poisoning and their bodies reduced to ashes as though they had been placed in a crematorium, which was indeed what each shelter proved to be.
The only people who escaped death were those who had risked flight at the right moment, or who were near enough to the edge of the sea of flame so that there was some possibility of saving them . . . The overall destruction is so radical that literally nothing is left of many people. The force of the gale tore children out of the hands of their parents and whirled them into the fire. People who thought they had gotten out safely, collapsed in the overwhelming heat and died in seconds. Fleeing people had to work their way over the dead and dying. Seventy per cent of the victims died of suffocation, mostly in poisonous carbon dioxide gas, which turned their corpses bright blue, orange and green. So many people died of this poisoning that initially it was thought that the RAF had raided us for the first time with poison gas bombs. Fifteen per cent had died more violent deaths. The rest were charred to a cinder and could not be identified.
Seventeen aircraft failed to return. One pilot reported after returning to base: ‘The clouds looked like a blood-soaked cotton swab’. Immediately after the raid about 1,200,000 people fled the city in fear of further raids.
The next raid on Hamburg was on 29/30 July when the objectives for the 777 aircraft that were detailed were the northern and north-eastern districts, which had so far escaped the bombing. Flight Sergeant Fred White, a navigator on 97 Path Finder Squadron at Bourn listened intently to the briefing. He would fly 68 operations in all and had the same pilot and flight engineer almost throughout his two tours. His pilot was Flying Officer
(later Squadron Leader) Charles Peter Crauford de Wesselow, a surgeon’s son of White Russian origins who had re-mustered from the Brigade of Guards and spoke several languages fluently. In November 1942 de Wesselow and his crew on 614 Squadron force-landed in Portugal in a Blenheim and were interned until January 1943. The precise, immaculate de Wesselow collected antique glass and could call on a rower’s physique for throwing a Lancaster around the sky. Fred White was working in the shoe trade in Kettering before he volunteered for the RAF as flight crew in December 1940 at the age of 20. He recalls:
To be honest, that first raid especially was terrifying, what you might call a ‘bit dicey’. We were caught in a searchlight cone over Hamburg and it took us about eight minutes to get out. It might not sound long, but when you are caught in the searchlights over the target, it feels a very long time indeed. Our Lancaster was designated ‘U’ on the squadron. The squadron had lost the last four ‘U’ planes in successive raids. We made it back, but with very heavy shrapnel damage.
A Lancaster and a Stirling crashed on take-off and took no further part in the operation. The Main Force was detailed to approach Hamburg from almost due north but the Path Finders arrived two miles too far to the east and marked an area south of the devastated firestorm area. Creep-back stretched about four miles along the devastated area and heavy bombing was reported in the residential districts of Wandsbek and Barmbek and parts of the Uhelnhorst and Winterhude. In all, 726 aircraft dropped 2,382 tons on the city and caused a widespread fire area but there was no firestorm. Danish workers arriving at their own frontier from Hamburg’s bombed war factories said, according to the Copenhagen correspondent of the Stockholm Aftonbladet that ‘Hamburg had ceased to exist as an organised city.’ Twenty-eight aircraft were shot down and a Stirling crash landed at RAF Coltishall on the return.
One of two Stirlings lost on 218 Squadron was A-Apple flown by Sergeant Raymond Stuart Pickard. Bert ‘Andy’ Anderson, the mid-upper gunner recalled:
We were hit by flak and caught in the searchlights. Our bomb bay was hit and as we were carrying incendiary bombs the aircraft caught fire. Pickard and Earl Bray RCAF our rear gunner were killed. I was wounded by a 20mm shell just as I left my turret to get my chest pack. The rest of us were taken prisoner. Me and twelve other wounded airmen that were shot down on the raid were under the SS supervisory orders from the Gestapo chief in Hamburg. Two Serbian PoW doctors were allowed to treat our wounds at 10 am each day. They were searched on arrival in our hut as they were not allowed to issue any sedatives. One of the American airmen died during the three months that we were held captive by the SS. A Polish PoW took our names and our service numbers and made his escape to Sweden. All this information was passed on to the Luftwaffe as well as the Allies and we were rescued by the Luftwaffe who sent us to a Luftwaffe hospital in Wismar near Lübeck. After Dulag Luft I was sent to Stalag IVB where I shared the same hut as our engineer, WOp and bomb aimer.12
One of the missing was the 460 Squadron RAAF Lancaster at Binbrook flown by Flying Officer Alan Johnson, which was destroyed by Hauptmann Prinz zur Lippe-Weissenfeld on detachment with NJG3. Oberleutnant Joachim Wendtland a Jägerleitoffizier (JLO, or GCI-controller) who flew with Weissenfeld as an observer recalled:
The dark shape of the Viermot was clearly visible against the night sky above us. It was a Lancaster. The pilot hit his left wing with his first attack and burning pieces flew off. The pilot was a little disappointed that the bomber was not shot down by this first attack. He had wanted to show me how to hit it between the two engines and finish it off quickly. The Lancaster kept straight and level all the time, without any evasive action. For the second attack Prinz zur Lippe used his special method. He slid under the bomber, pulled up the nose suddenly, fired a burst and dropped away quickly in case the bomber blew up. It didn’t although pieces were still falling off it. We attacked again. The bomber still did not explode. In the fourth attack his wing started burning after half a second, we saw the Lancaster go down into a wood near a railway.
Cliff O’Riordan, who had celebrated his return from La Spezia in April with a ‘pub crawl’ in London, was killed. The 33-year-old Australian gunner, his pilot and the four other members of the crew were all lost without trace. Their names were added to the memorial at Runnymede.
On the night of 30/31 July 273 aircraft were dispatched to bomb Remscheid on the southern edge of the Ruhr, which had not previously been bombed. The Oboe ground-marking and the bombing were exceptionally accurate and 83 per cent of the town was devastated although only 871 tons of bombs were dropped. German defences were quickly overcoming the effects of Window and fifteen aircraft were shot down. Two more bombers were lost when a Lancaster crashed at Downham Market and a Stirling crashed at King’s Cliffe in Northamptonshire. On 218 ‘Gold Coast’ Squadron, 21-year-old Acting Flight Sergeant Arthur Louis Aaron, a former Air Training Corps cadet from Leeds whose mother was of Swiss extraction, was nearly one of these losses. Only coolness under pressure by the whole crew enabled their safe return. Sergeant Malcolm Mitchem the flight engineer recalled:
We were late on our timing. We were delayed due to being coned in searchlights near Amsterdam, entailing losing height and direction to evade them then regaining height whilst still loaded. We were cutting off corners to get round Düsseldorf to get to the target and back into our bomb slot time for our wave and height. We never did catch up and going in to the target with gunners were told to keep our eyes peeled watching above for higher waves of aircraft going in.
Despite this they were hit by three incendiaries dropped from above. Two 4 pounders penetrated the starboard wing between No. 2 and No. 4 main tanks. Fortunately, they remained unignited and were discovered there when the crew landed back at Downham Market, their home airfield. A 30-pounder penetrated the fuselage roof. It drove the hydraulic lines, which would have powered the mid-under turret (not fitted) through the floor of the fuselage into the well where the turret would otherwise have been. The incendiary caught fire and set light to the hydraulic fluid gushing from the fractured pipes. Having nearly been struck as it penetrated the aircraft, ‘Jimmie’ Guy the wireless operator, who had been by the flare chute pushing out wads of Window, called up on the intercom to report that the aircraft was on fire. The aircraft filled with thick black smoke and fumes and flames roared up through the fuselage floor and out of the gashed roof as a great flare of flame. Whilst Arthur Aaron and Flight Sergeant Alan Larden RCAF, the bomb aimer, pressed on with the task of reaching and bombing the target, Mitchem came off intercom, grabbed some portable fire extinguishers and went back to fight the fire. The flare of flame and the fire-glow in the fuselage attracted the searchlights, which again coned the aircraft. Having dropped their bombs, Aaron started a diving, twisting descent to forestall the flak and escape the searchlights.
Alan Larden said:
Arthur had opened his side window to force the smoke to the back of the aircraft and by then ‘Jimmie’ Guy the wireless operator and I were able to work our way back along the aircraft to Jim Richmond in the mid-upper turret. Jim had been trapped there above the fire. With the aid of portable oxygen cylinders we were able to help him to the front of the aircraft to recover.
With all the smoke and the eerie glow cast by the searchlights and the flames Malcolm Mitchem, who was off intercom, was confused about the state of the aircraft.
With all the diving and turning I thought that the aircraft was out of control and that maybe all the others had bailed out. I began to return up front to reach my own parachute when I met Alan and ‘Jimmie’ Guy coming back with more extinguishers after they had moved Jim Richmond forward. The incendiary had burnt its way through the floor and fallen out. We were able then to extinguish what remained of the fire around the hole left in the floor.
By now, Arthur Aaron had descended towards the Cologne/Düsseldorf gap in the searchlight belt and eventually escaped the glare of the lights. They had lost a lot of height and were streaking for home on an even ke
el at low level across Holland. When they had crossed the Dutch coast and were out over the North Sea they could relax a little. Flasks were opened and coffee was pressed upon Malcolm who was coughing and retching from all the smoke and extinguisher fumes. They landed back at Downham Market at 03.05 hours after a very eventful 4½ hour flight. The London Gazette of 19 October 1943 announced the award of the DFM to Arthur Aaron who had proved to be ‘an exceptional captain and leader’.13
On 2 August after a day of heavy thunderstorms, 740 bomber crews were briefed for the fourth raid on Hamburg. They were told that the weather was extremely bad and that cumulonimbus clouds covered the route up to 20,000 feet. Above that height the sky was reported to be clear but the bombing force encountered a large thunderstorm area over Germany and no Path Finder marking was possible. Flight Lieutenant Robert Burr on 44 (Rhodesia) Squadron was one of those who succeeded in dropping his bombs that night but many crews turned back early or bombed alternative targets. Burr said:
Bomber Command Page 3