Bomber Command

by Martin Bowman

  Fighter action had caused some bombers to crash on return. A Stirling plummeted into a field at Scottow near RAF Coltishall injuring six and killing one of the crew. At Middleton St. George a 419 ‘Moose’ Squadron Halifax crashed on landing and a 428 ‘Ghost’ Squadron Halifax on the same station was wrecked after landing at Tangmere. Many of the Halifaxes, Lancasters and Stirlings that returned from Kassel carried dead and wounded aboard. Ron Walkup eventually landed at Ford at 04.00 after a lonely return flight at low level. A quick examination by the Squadron engineer soon confirmed that the aircraft was a write-off, riddled from the middle to the tail with bullet holes and the upper turret disappeared altogether. But of greatest interest were pieces of FW 190 embedded in the fuselage. This was one claim that could not be denied. Wally was awarded the DFM and the crew all went to Boston to celebrate.

  Heading for home Nick Knilans had dropped to 12,000 feet and he sent the flight engineer aft to check on Jerry Jackson. He found him slumped over his guns. Knilans wrote:

  When we landed I told the crew they need not stay on to see Jerry taken from his turret. The ground crew were unable to open the turret doors, as the force of the cannon shells had driven Jerry against them and I had to use a screwdriver to prise them apart. Then I got hold of Jerry’s collar and pulled him backwards, free of the turret. His body was stiff as I lowered it to the ground and took off his goggles, oxygen mask and helmet. His still features were unmarked. I brushed back a fallen lock of hair. His forehead was icy cold. The middle of his flying suit was badly torn and bloodstained. After examining him, one of the ambulance helpers suddenly became ill and had to walk away. The cannon shells had cut Jerry in half.

  I stayed behind in the darkness, depressed at losing my friend. When I got to the briefing room the Squadron doctor told me that Jerry must have died instantaneously. He gave me two sleeping pills but I gave them to a WAAF who was overcome with grief. She was a good friend of Jerry’s and he had given her his personal effects to send to his parents if he failed to return. Before drifting off to sleep, I prayed that God would see Jerry into heaven.11

  In his office on the same airfield Abercromby tore up the pass for Jerry Jackson. A telegram would be going out to the gunner’s next-of-kin. At Bardney a similarly worded telegram was being sent to Kathleen Leslie in Romford telling her that her husband Angus was dead.

  On 4/5 October just over 400 aircraft attacked Frankfurt. Clear weather and good Path Finder resulted in extensive devastation to the eastern half of the city and in the inland docks on the River Main, both areas being described by the Germans, as a ‘sea of flames’. Tame and Wild Boars claimed twelve victories though eleven bombers – five Halifaxes, three Lancasters and one of three American-crewed B-17s – were lost. Y-Yorker on 156 Squadron at Warboys, one of the Lancasters that went missing in action, was piloted by Squadron Leader Arthur Sydney Cook DFC DFM RAAF, who at 21 years of age was one of the youngest officers of his rank to be killed on operations. His six crew members also died. J-Johnny, a 427 ‘Lion’ Squadron RCAF Halifax and Warrant Officer Ellwin Clair Champion’s crew, which included navigator, Flying Officer Tod J Thomas USAAF, failed to return to Leeming when they crashed at Haut-Fays in Luxembourg on the homeward trip. They were buried in Hotton War Cemetery, Thomas later being interred in the US Military Cemetery at Neuville-en-Condroz in Belgium. Sergeant J W Brant USAAF, tail gunner on the crew of Pilot Officer Cecil James Morley Wilkie CGM was also buried there after their Lancaster on 50 Squadron crashed in the southern suburbs of Frankfurt with the loss of all the crew. Brant now rests in his hometown in the state of Illinois.

  Two Halifaxes that made it back crashed on their return to England. G-George on 35 Squadron at Graveley was very badly damaged by flak over the target and was crash-landed near Biggin Hill airfield. The aircraft caught fire and the four injured crew were treated at the Kent and Sussex Hospital. A 429 ‘Bison’ Squadron RCAF Halifax flown by Flight Lieutenant Pentony that was badly shot about by a night fighter, which destroyed the outer starboard motor and damaged the fuel tanks, ran low on petrol and was abandoned near Crowborough in Sussex. Two crew men were killed. Pentony and the five others including Flight Sergeant George James Byers RCAF who was on his ‘second dickey’ flight, survived. Byers rejoined his own crew, all of whom were lost without trace in November on the operation to Düsseldorf.

  Two Stirlings also failed to return from the raid on Frankfurt. M-Mike on 75 Squadron at Mepal six miles west of Ely, crashed at Russelsheim killing all seven crew, and J-Johnny on XV Squadron, flown by Flight Sergeant Norman L Thomas RAAF was hit by bombs over the target. At Mildenhall his fiancée Joyce, a WAAF radio operator, was understandably worried. The couple had met on one of the year’s lovely days and evenings, for 1943 was a beautiful spring and summer:

  At times the war seemed very far away until I looked at the wings on his tunic and my heart would lurch and I’d wonder, ‘how long, how long?’ He never talked of it; it was always the other crews who’d got ‘the chop’ or ‘bought it’. Funny how most air crews grew a shell around them and accepted (outwardly at any rate) the empty chairs at the table after a raid. But we didn’t waste any time talking about it – there were the usual dances and pictures – Vera Lynn singing Silver Wings in the Moonlight, Yours, You’ll Never Know – all the sentimental songs that made the heart ache when the leave was over and there were just the letters; always the letters . . . Every letter had a number in the corner that meant so many ops done. Some days there were 50 or 60 aircraft missing and you thought ‘you know’ but on this particular Tuesday morning I said to my mother ‘Thank goodness only eleven aircraft are missing today; Norman will be safe. I’ll see him tomorrow.’ In the event the telegram didn’t come and I had this feeling that something was wrong, so I decided to ring the Sergeant’s Mess. When I asked if Norman was there a young pilot said, ‘Oh he’s missing from Monday night’s raid.’

  I just said ‘Oh’ and he said, ‘Oh my God; who are you?’ I said that I was his fiancée. He was very embarrassed and said, ‘I thought you were the telephone operator. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything.’

  I said, ‘Oh that’s all right; do you know any details?’

  He said, ‘No, I’m sorry, I don’t.’

  I said, ‘Oh thanks very much,’ and just hung up. I thought, ‘It might be his “turn” tomorrow.’ Then after about four days I could hear Norman’s voice in my head, all the time saying, ‘I’m all right Joycie, I’m fair dinkum.’ I spoke to my father and he said, ‘Well look, he’s got a 50–50 chance; don’t bank too much on it.’

  Norman Thomas was one of the lucky ones. He and his crew were prisoners in Stalag Luft IVB at Torgau.

  Ludford Magna or ‘Mudford Magma’, as it was known because it was still marshy although built on one of the highest stretches of the Lincolnshire Wolds, was home to special Lancasters on 101 Squadron. It was a three flight squadron, flying up to 24 Lancasters in the bomber stream, armed and loaded with bombs just like the other heavy bombers but with an extra crew member in each squadron aircraft to jam enemy radio transmissions. ABC or Airborne Cigar night fighter communications was a massive piece of equipment consisting of four VHF wireless sets. One scanned up and down the airwaves, seeking transmissions from enemy fighters. When a blip showed on the operator’s CRT scope a German-speaking special operator positioned half way down the fuselage between the main spar and the mid-upper turret, tuned one of the other sets to that frequency and listened in. If the speaker was a Jägerleitoffizier (JLO, or GCI-controller) the special operator would flood the enemy controller’s instructions with interference.

  Sergeant Gerhard Heilig, born on 19 April 1925 in Budapest, Hungary of an Austrian journalist and a Hungarian mother, both members of Jewish families, was one of the special operators on 214 Squadron and later 101 Squadron. As a 13-year-old Gerhard had been shipped to Great Britain in December 1938 on a special children’s transport, thus escaping the threatening doom. During the early war years, after
a spell at a Quaker school in Yorkshire, Gerhard learned the trade of electrician at a school for refugees in Leeds and got a job as a telephone engineer in London. Meanwhile, he had become very interested in aviation, which led to him deciding to volunteer for aircrew duties in the spring of 1943. On reaching the minimum age in the summer of that year, he was trained as a radio operator, to become involved in the highly secret airborne jamming war. Heilig recalls:

  We were informed that the sole object of the squadron was to carry special operators like ourselves along in the main bomber stream and it would be our duty to find, identify and jam enemy fighter control transmissions, causing havoc and confusion to their defences. The whole thing was so secret that not even the Commanding Officer knew what it was all about.12

  Sergeant Sam Brookes was a special operator who arrived at Ludford after a course, which before the war had been of two years duration and had now been condensed into six months because of the enormous demand for aircrew. Called up that spring the RAF said he could elect to be trained as a pilot but he would have to wait to join up for a year:

  Alternatively, they had vacancies for rear gunners – come next Monday. I was keen to get started but . . . ummm. There was a third choice, be a wireless operator in three months. That sounded like a reasonable compromise and I took it. August Bank holiday 1943 found me reporting to the ACRC (Air Crew Reception Centre), at Lord’s cricket ground for induction and training. I joined a squad of 30 likely lads, all destined to train as wireless operators and we started initial training. Three weeks of inoculations and square bashing to commence. We lived in commandeered luxury flats along Prince Consort Road, marching to be fed in a similarly commandeered cafe at the zoo just across the road in Regents Park. Then to Bridgnorth to 19 ITW (Initial Training Wing), where we started the rudiments of wireless training and began to absorb Morse code. November came and we moved to No. 2 Radio School at Yatesbury in Wiltshire – a huge wooden-hutted camp in the middle of nowhere but with a small grass airfield next door, from which we would be flown to do our training for wireless operating in the air.

  I proudly became a sergeant wireless operator and stood by for posting to OTU, the next stage towards operational flying but within a week four of us were told that the remainder of our training would be cut by some months. We would be posted to a familiarisation unit to get used to flying in heavy bombers and would probably be flying on operations within a month! The job we were to do would be to fly in Lancasters as an extra crew member with the specific task of operating special jamming equipment designed to prevent the Luftwaffe night fighter pilots from hearing directions from their ground controllers. It was a very exciting time. We were sent to No. 1 LFS (Lancaster Finishing School) at Hemswell, north of Lincoln, to fly for ten hours familiarization on four-engined bombers. After the stately de Havilland Dominie and tiny Percival Proctors the Lancaster was large, loud, fast and fierce.

  Upon arrival the first thing was a few days’ introduction to the equipment we were to operate. I have no idea why they named it ABC. It consisted of three enormous powerful transmitters covering the radio voice bands used by the Luftwaffe. To help identify the place to jam there was a panoramic receiver covering the same bands. The receiver scanned up and down the bands at high speed and the result of its travel was shown on a time-base calibrated across a cathode ray tube in front of the operator. If there was any traffic on the band it showed as a blip at the appropriate frequency along the line of light that was the time-base. When a ‘blip’ appeared, one could immediately spot tune the receiver to it and listen to the transmission. If the language was German then it only took a moment to swing the first of the transmitters to the same frequency, press a switch and leave a powerful jamming warble there to prevent the underlying voice being heard. The other two transmitters could then be brought in on other ‘blips’. If 24 aircraft were flying, spread through the Bomber stream, then there were a potential 72 loud jamming transmissions blotting out the night fighters’ directions.

  The Germans tried all manner of devices to overcome the jamming, including having their instructions sung by Wagnerian sopranos. This was to fool our operators into thinking it was just a civilian channel and not worth jamming. I think ABC probably did a useful job, but who can say what difference it made. Anyway, it was an absorbing time for keen, fit, young men who thought only of the challenges and excitements of their task and little of the risks they were about to run. Next step was to get ‘crewed up’. The normal seven-man crews for Lancasters had been made up and had been flying together for months before arrival at the Squadron. We Special Duty Operators now had to tag on to established crews and it was left largely to us to find out with which pilot we, in our ignorance, might wish to fly.

  The Airborne Cigar Lancasters made their operational debut on the moonless night of 7/8 October when over 340 Lancasters raided Stuttgart. The ABC aircraft played their part on their debut but any signal transmitted by a bomber could be used by a fighter to locate it and in time losses on 101 Squadron, who flew more operations than most other squadrons, would lose heavily, as the enemy sought to diminish their effectiveness.

  What really confused the Jägerleitoffizier were the diversions by Mosquitoes to Munich, Emden and Aachen13 such that only a few night fighters reached the Stuttgart area and only then at the end of the raid. Just three Lancasters were lost and a Lancaster on 408 ‘Goose’ Squadron RCAF was abandoned near Pickering, Yorkshire shortly after take-off from Linton-on-Ouse. Moments later the aircraft crashed into a farm killing George Strickland, a 51-year-old famer who died as the bomb load exploded.14

  Pilot Officer Donald Wares and crew were flying their first operation on 49 Squadron at Fiskerton. They had been given a brand new Lancaster but during pre-flight checks the Lancaster developed engine trouble and they were instead given P-Peter, which had been on the squadron since the previous December. They took off late and by the time they were over Holland the rest of the Main Force was on its way home. Wares pressed on regardless and they were attacked six or seven times by night fighters. Though they managed to drop their bombs on the target it was like being in the ‘middle of a firework display’ as the flak gunners fired everything they had got at the single bomber daring to cross the target area. Then a night fighter pumped cannon shells into the starboard side of the Lancaster and the outer engine caught fire. Wares feathered it and they carried on at 18,000 feet on three engines. Ten minutes later the fire had spread to the starboard inner engine and that too was feathered. Steadily losing height P-Peter finally slammed into high ground near Bézimont in the Fôret-de-Commercy. The flight engineer, bomb aimer and navigator were killed. Sergeant Gilbert Attwood the mid-upper gunner and Flying Officer Archie Fitzgerald RAAF the rear gunner had broken arms and legs and were soon captured. Sergeant Ray Barlow the WOp/AG regained consciousness inside the blazing Lancaster and found Wares unconscious in his seat. Barlow finally managed to open the sliding window beside his seat and they both jumped out into the burning undergrowth. They flew the scene as exploding bullets whizzed about them. Barlow and Wares made it to Switzerland where they were interned.15

  The two other Lancaster losses were on 9 Squadron at Bardney. Pilot Officer Arthur Mair and his crew were killed, the Lancaster crashing near Böblingen, south-west of Stuttgart. C-Charlie piloted by 23-year-old Lieutenant Eric George Roberts USAAF crashed at Kiechlinsbergen near Endingen about 90 miles after the target. Pilot Officer W Chadwick the bomb aimer, who managed to get out through the forward escape hatch, was the only survivor. Roberts, from Merchantville, Camden County, New Jersey had only arrived on the squadron a month earlier.16

  Bridge Farm, Bradfield, in the heart of rural north Norfolk was the home of William and Matilda Gibbons and their son Jack. Farming was pretty tough in the thirties and forties, with no cars, tractors or combine harvesters; nor a telephone or electricity in the house. The 8th of October had been just another day and as is the habit of the farming community, they retired early. On the ma
ny RAF airfields across East Anglia it was a different story. Just over 500 aircraft of the main force, including 26 Wellingtons of 300 (Polish) and ten on 432 ‘Leaside’ Squadron RCAF – the Wimpys flying their last main force bombing operation of the war – would once again visit Hannover. At a certain position the Lancasters, Halifaxes, Wimpys and eight Mosquitoes would turn towards Hannover leaving 119 bombers, 95 of them Stirlings, as decoys still heading for Bremen. Pilot Officer Phil Dyson and his 196 Squadron crew were detailed to fly Stirling III C-Charlie from their base at Witchford in Cambridgeshire on what they hoped would be the final op of their first tour. At briefing that night a strong emphasis had been placed on the need for navigational accuracy and perfect timing: lone aircraft would be sitting ducks for the Luftwaffe night fighter crews, so when C-Charlie’s take-off was delayed it was an unwelcome complication, as Phil Dyson recalls:

  The pre-flight checks which every self-preserving pilot carried out very carefully indeed, revealed that the pilot’s escape hatch was unlocked. Combined efforts to move the locking lever over to the ‘shut’ position failed to secure the hatch but, finally with the assistance of a sergeant fitter it was declared well and truly locked and C-Charlie roared down the runway three minutes’ late. We had gained little more than 50 feet in height after take-off when Jack Parker, the rear gunner, remarked that something had just hit the tail and, simultaneously, I announced the loss of the escape hatch above my head. With commendable imagination my 19-year-old flight engineer, Peter Hooker, commandeered the navigator’s green canvas chart case and within a few minutes, with the skill of a surgeon, he had fixed a canopy above my head which reduced the gale to a fairly stiff breeze. The decision was made, perhaps unwisely, to proceed on course to Bremen and increased boost gradually made up for lost time. We approached the Dutch coast and we could see the unseen stream of those in front attracting the attention of the German ack-ack on the Frisian Islands. Trouble rarely comes singly they say. The flight engineer suddenly reported the port inner engine was giving trouble (it was running very hot although that was not an infrequent occurrence), but two minutes later he requested me to cut the offending engine – which I did – and feather the propeller. The spectre of an engine fire constantly haunted aircrews. There was hardly time to consider the prospect of flying over Bremen with three engines when my young engineer somewhat tremulously exclaimed ‘Skipper, the port outer, the same bloody thing. We’ve lost oil pressure and the temperature is way above limit. We’ve got to feather the port outer.’