Bomber Command

by Martin Bowman

  Twenty-year-old Pilot Officer Edward Argent on 9 Squadron who was flying Lancaster O-Orange on the aircraft’s fiftieth op, encountered enemy opposition when on the way home. While crossing a belt of flares north of the target 23-year-old Sergeant Alf Trevena the Australian mid-upper gunner from Hawthorn, Victoria, saw a Me 210 diving in from port quarter up and immediately gave the order to corkscrew port. Both gunners and the 210 opened fire at the same instant at 200 yards. The Messerschmitt’s tracer was seen to pass above the Lancaster but the gunners’ return fire was seen by Sergeant George Fradley the wireless operator who was standing in the astrodome, to hit the twin-engined attacker. The Me 210 went into a very steep dive and disappeared port quarter down. As it broke away a burst of cannon and machine gun fire from port quarter up struck the Lancaster and Trevena saw a Ju 88 diving in from the same direction as the previous attack. He engaged the Ju 88 with return fire until both his guns stopped working, after which he assisted Argent by giving a commentary during the whole engagement, which lasted throughout about a dozen very rapid attacks by the Ju 88. Flight Sergeant Vince Knox, the 19-year-old Canadian rear gunner who was from Victoria, British Columbia, fired 400 rounds before he was killed. The Lancaster received serious damage in the initial attack by the Ju 88 but in all the remaining attacks only sustained slight damage in the starboard wing. The Ju 88 finally broke away on the starboard beam and was not seen again. The pilot maintained a corkscrew throughout all attacks. Argent managed to keep the Lancaster level almost to the Norfolk coast but had to ditch in the sea off Happisburgh. The crew made it into the dinghy and managed to keep going through four dark hours of a December night before an Air Sea Rescue launch picked them up. They were given ten days’ leave.16

  All the aircraft on the diversion operation to Mannheim returned safely though some of the Lancasters were bracketed by flak, as Brian Soper recalls:

  We missed all the light flak at 20,000 feet, but got some of the medium and all of the heavy. It was delivered either as a mass barrage over the target, or other places en route. Otherwise it was radar predicted for the individual aircraft, which was very accurate. We thought we hadn’t yet reached the target. Suddenly we were rocked by six or seven heavy blasts all around us from predicted flak. At the same time the gunners spotted the target – behind us, in another direction – we were slightly off course. We had to do a complete circuit to avoid the other oncoming Lancs and join the bombing circuit and we eventually bombed on the markers. It was otherwise a reasonably uneventful trip.

  There were however, other losses this night. A Stirling minelayer failed to return from a Gardening operation in the Frisians. One aircraft was lost on the operation by eight Lancasters of 617 Squadron and eight Path Finder Mosquitoes that attempted to bomb the John Cockerill steel works near Liège. The Mosquito marking was not visible below the clouds and the Lancasters did not bomb. Z-Zebra piloted by Flight Lieutenant Geoff Rice DFC failed to return. One of the five survivors of the original squadron, the 23-year-old Mancunian was shot down southwest of Charleroi by Hauptmann Kurt Fladrich, Staffelkapitän 9./NJG4 at Juvincourt flying a Bf 110G-4. Rice was thrown clear as Z-Zebra exploded. His crew was killed. All had flown the famous dams raid with Rice who had aborted after hitting the sea on the outward flight, ripping off the ‘Upkeep’ mine. Despite a broken wrist, Rice managed to evade capture for six months until April 1944 by which time the Belgian Resistance had moved him to Brussels.

  Just before Christmas Sergeant Roy Keen, a married flight engineer originally from Redhill in Surrey arrived on 166 Squadron at Kirmington after Heavy Conversion Unit at Lindholme. He had been a fitter in the RAF for a couple of years before becoming aircrew and had soon found that being a flight engineer was a ‘bit of a cold and dirty job!’

  The silly thing was that there weren’t enough Lancasters to go round and we did our course in Halifaxes! Not very good for the engineer; I was trained on Lancs, but you suddenly get in a Halifax and have to do the business! I remember once looking at my oxygen bottle and noticing I’d got about a minute left before it ran out. I thought ‘I’ve just got time to change the tanks.’ Now, in a Halifax you had to climb underneath the rest bed where there was a bank of six levers each side, about twelve tanks from memory. I thought ‘I’ve got to do 3 and 4 I think’, but all of a sudden the plane pitched down, so I put them back and said ‘Sorry, Skipper!’ Bill Jackson the pilot was a Canadian who we called ‘Rex’. The front turret was officially my job. I never had to use it, but I had done gunnery practice. Flight Sergeant Ken Mitchell the mid-upper gunner had done 32 trips. The pilot, navigator and bomb-aimer got together before we all met and then the wireless operator and gunners joined them. I was the last to join the crew. My skipper said ‘I chose you because you’ve got a dirty overcoat on; you must have been on a squadron!’

  The pilot, nav and bomb-aimer were all officers, so they weren’t allowed to mess with us. I teamed up with the wireless operator, Frank Fountaine, more than anyone else and I taught him how to do my job, well loosely, in case there was any trouble. The Skipper taught me how to fly straight and level in case he got knocked off. I’m quite glad that I never had to take over! If I had have done, we weren’t supposed to land, just point it out to sea and bail out. But between us, we had agreed that I should try and land it, as I used to operate the landing gear anyway. We perhaps stood a fifty-fifty chance that way, as the crew didn’t particularly want to bail out! The only bother we ever had was when taking off once and the rear gunner said, ‘I’m covered in petrol!’ I could tell why, as we had just taken off and the tanks were venting, so I changed tanks and told him he’d be all right if he didn’t smoke!

  We were on call seven days a week. If we were flying that night, I’d have to spend the morning with the ground staff looking at the aeroplane, run up the engines, check they didn’t blow up! Then we’d go back and have a sleep before taking off at six or seven o’clock. But you didn’t just do ops. They stuck us on a few little trips around the locality. There were air-sea searches, fighter affiliation flying and so on. You were always training, like on H2S, which came out about that time. If we were flying that day, we had to stay on station. One day the skipper collared us as we were leaving the airfield and said we were going test-flying. I went up in just my battledress. We were up three hours and I was frozen stiff! I’d never been so cold. Normally we had three pairs of gloves, silk, wool and leather, flying boots, long pants – it was uncomfortable. I would stand up on takeoff; I was never strapped in. The seat was like a little camp stool with a canvas strap, if you did want to sit down. The skipper was strapped in of course!

  Every morning was the same – at ten we’d see if we were flying and if not were allowed off the airfield. We used to go to Grimsby, Scunthorpe or Lincoln and be back to report the next day. We hadn’t a hope of getting leave. When I got married I had asked for a week off. I got forty-eight hours and was told I was lucky to get that.

  In the early hours of Christmas Eve 379 aircraft took off for Berlin. Once again the Main Force Halifaxes were rested and only seven Hallys took part. This raid was originally planned for a late afternoon take-off but a forecast of worsening weather over the bomber stations caused the raid to be put back by seven hours to allow the bombers a return in daylight. Arthur Tindall on 97 Squadron at Bourn recalls: ‘Another early take off – 00.20.’

  At Wickenby two Lancasters on 12 Squadron collided while taxiing. A 7 Squadron Lancaster at Oakington crashed out of control and there were injuries to all the crew. A 100 Squadron Lancaster and a 550 Squadron Lanc, both at Grimsby, were involved in a collision over Lincolnshire and both crashed near Fulstow killing everyone on board both bombers.

  Losses after leaving England were not as heavy as on recent raids, partly because German night fighters encountered difficulty with the weather and partly because the German controller was temporarily deceived by the Mosquito diversion at Leipzig. At the target there were no fighters and few searchlights because of scattered clou
d but only 11 of the 39 Blind Markers released their markers, mainly because of H2S failures. Just one other aircraft was able to drop its 11 Green TIs and these landed six miles away. Most of the Main Force had bombed by the time the PFF backers-up could get their markers away and mainly the bombing was in the suburbs of the German capital. The main force of fighters only appeared in the target area at the end of the raid and could not catch the main bomber stream. Two bombers were shot down on the run-up to the capital and two more were shot down over the target. Fifteen Lancasters in all were shot down. Two were claimed by Oberfeldwebel Karl-Heinz Scherfling of 12./NJG1. Three were destroyed by Oberleutnant Paul Zorner of 8./NJG3, who had been credited with 16 victories, including five on his first two nights of operations in a Bf 110 equipped with SN-2 at the end of November.

  Zorner took off from Lüneburg at 01.39 hours. At 02.46 he picked up a Lancaster flying at 16,500 feet. It was a 576 Squadron aircraft flown by Pilot Officer Richard Lloyd Hughes. Zorner shot it down four minutes later. Only three men bailed out before the bomber went down in a steep dive and plunged burning into the clouds to crash east of Giessen. By now Zorner had lost contact with the bomber stream and he was almost out of fuel. He landed at Gutersloh, refuelled and took off again 40 minutes later. By now the bombers were returning from Berlin and 35 minutes later Zorner’s radar operator picked up a contact at 18,900 feet. It was X-X-Ray, a 44 Squadron Lancaster flown by Sergeant Roy Ladbrooke Hands. Zorner hit the Lancaster in the right wing and it spiralled down into cloud. He saw an explosion. There were no survivors. Eleven minutes later Zorner’s radar operator picked up another contact, at 18,300 feet. It was L-London, a 50 Squadron Lancaster flown by Flying Officer Derrick Wilson Herbert. Zorner twice carried out attacks on the bomber and a fire started in the right wing. Then the wing exploded and a few seconds later the aircraft went down with all the crew trapped inside. Zorner flew back to Lüneburg to log claims for his 17th, 18th and 19th Viermot kills.

  The losses could have been higher, as Arthur Tindall recalls. ‘On the return we were attacked eight times by fighters. All of our guns were frozen. We landed on three engines and one tyre had burst – unknown to us until touchdown. The aircraft was written off.’

  On Christmas morning crews were warned for operations that night but the order was cancelled a half hour later. Roy Keen on 166 Squadron spent the fifth Christmas of the war in a hotel in Doncaster. The next raid was ordered for the night of 29 December. At Skellingthorpe just outside Lincoln Pilot Officer Michael Beetham 17 and his crew were one of fifteen on 50 Squadron called to the Nissen-hutted briefing room at 14.00 hours. Michael Beetham had been educated at St. Marylebone’s Grammar School. His father had won an MC in the Great War as an army major in the trenches. He wanted his son to go into the army but, with his father stationed near Portsmouth, in 1940 Michael spent the summer holidays watching RAF fighters in the Battle of Britain tackling German bombers trying to destroy the local docks. He joined the RAF straight from school in 1941, trained as a pilot in America and entered Bomber Command to fly Lancasters in the autumn of 1943. He loved the Lancaster:

  It felt right, it handled beautifully and was a delight to fly. If it was heavier on the controls than we now consider proper, back then this weight gave a young pilot confidence and you got used to it.18

  The Squadron commander pulled back the curtain over the map and revealed the target – Berlin. We swallowed a little. For me and my crew it was only our seventh trip and this would be our fourth to the ‘Big City’; the Battle of Berlin was clearly on. Seven hundred Lancasters and Halifaxes from the Command would attack in five waves – all phased through the target in twenty minutes to saturate the defences.19 Mosquitoes would carry out diversionary attacks on Magdeburg and Leipzig. We were to feint towards Leipzig and then turn north to Berlin at the last minute. The met man told us there would be heavy cloud over most of Germany, widespread fog and poor visibility. Hopefully, that would restrict their fighters. Our bases were forecast to be fine for return. That was a relief, for on our last trip, to Berlin we returned to fog-bound bases and only got down in Yorkshire with difficulty. Out to aircraft dispersal at 16.00 hours for a final check of everything. We had our brand-new Lancaster VN-B with the latest paddle-bladed propellers, air-tested that morning and this was our first trip in it. Take-off at 17.00 hours. All fifteen aircraft taxied out in turn and there was a good crowd as usual beside the runway controller’s caravan to see us off . . .

  Three and a quarter hours to the target. We climbed to cross the Dutch coast at 1,900 feet and then gradually got to maximum height around 20–21,000 feet. Our route was north of the Ruhr and then southeast past Osnabrück and Hannover towards Leipzig . . . A sharp turn north twenty miles short of Leipzig with the diversionary aircraft heading straight on – hopefully the fighter controllers would be fooled. [A long approach from the south, passing south of the Ruhr and then within 20 miles of Leipzig, together with diversions by Mosquitoes at Düsseldorf, Leipzig and Magdeburg and RCM sorties, caused the German controller great difficulties and there were few fighters over Berlin. Bad weather on the outward route also kept down the number of German fighters finding the bomber stream.] The final run up north of Berlin. We were in the third wave. Much more activity now, with searchlights trying to penetrate the cloud and pick up the bombers ahead of us. Plenty of flak as we approached the target but not really close. No sign of fighters. Some turbulence from the slipstream of other bombers – always a bit disconcerting.

  Wanganui marker flares ahead were going down on time. We would be bombing blind. The markers were well concentrated and a good glow of fires started by the aircraft attacking ahead of us showed through the cloud.

  Straight and level now with two minutes to go and bomb doors open. Bomb aimer called ‘bombs gone’ on the middle of the markers. We felt the 4,000lb ‘cookie’ go and then the canisters of incendiaries – always a relief to have them away and the bomb doors closed again. We flew right across Berlin and out well to the north before turning for home. Navigator said four hours to go . . . A long haul to the Dutch coast; we eventually crossed but didn’t relax – you could get caught by fighters over the North Sea.

  The Christmas Eve raid was Brian Soper’s sixth trip to the ‘Big City’. He recalls:

  We were approaching the target and getting lined up for the bomb run. I was helping the gunners to look out for fighters. Suddenly, above, to my right, came a Halifax, diving and weaving across us. It came within a few feet of us and must have been taking evasive action against a night fighter. It looked near enough to touch! Remember of course that all around us, apart from the target, was total blackness. I just happened to be looking that way. I shouted and tried to help the pilot push the control column forward. Any action would have been too late anyway. Of course it missed and when we recovered we just got back on course and carried on with the bomb run. We all agreed it was probably our closest encounter. There were of course many other close calls. Berlin was again cloud-covered. Bomber Command claimed a concentrated attack on sky-markers. The heaviest bombing was in the southern and south-eastern districts but many bombs also fell to the east of the city and over 10,000 people were bombed out.20

  Pilot Officer Michael Beetham got safely down at Skellingthorpe at half past midnight:

  At de-briefing we reported a quiet and uneventful trip – for Berlin. Just one aircraft lost on our squadron – not bad for such a tough target and looked like it had been a good attack. And so to our bacon and eggs and bed at 02.00 hours. Next morning at Skellingthorpe I reported to the flight at 10.00 hours to see whether ‘ops’ were on that night. The Flight Commander said, ‘So you had a quiet trip last night?’

  ‘Yes’ I replied. ‘Fairly uneventful.’

  ‘Come with me,’ he said.

  We drove out to the flight dispersal and to my aircraft . . . Two of my ground crew were on top of the starboard wing. I was staggered to see a large hole through the starboard wing outer fuel tank – a clear gash t
hrough it. ‘What have you done to our new aircraft?’ asked my corporal airframe fitter. ‘We are going to have to change the wing.’ We had collected an incendiary from another Lancaster above us over the target – the outline was clearly visible through the wing. ‘Didn’t you really feel anything over the target?’ queried the Flight Commander. ‘No’ I said. ‘Some usual turbulence from the slipstream of other aircraft and some flak but not close enough to worry.’21 I thanked my lucky stars we always used the outer wing fuel first so the tank would have been empty and purged with nitrogen well before the target – and I wondered how close had been the rest of the bomb load.

  As 1943 neared its close German airmen like Feldwebel Friedrich Ostheimer, who had recently joined Major Heinrich Prinz zu Sayn-Wittgenstein, Kommandeur of II./NJG2 as his new Bordfunker at Deelen, Holland reflected on the year’s events which had not boded well for Germany:

  A few more weeks and the year of 1943 would be a thing of the past. The war, with all its distress and terror was at its height. Our troops were fighting from the North Cape to the Libyan Desert and from Russia to the Atlantic. Since America’s entry into the war the Luftwaffe was utterly outnumbered and the crews under unceasing stress. At Arnhem-Deelen Prinz Wittgenstein [who had begun his career in the Luftwaffe as an air gunner and at the outbreak of war flew with KG1 ‘Hindenburg’] spent his time either in his bungalow or at the command post. The flight engineer, the first mechanic and I were on stand-by in a small hut beside the hangar, which housed our Ju 88. We only saw the Prinz when he came to fly. After landing he returned immediately to his quarters. Once he invited us to his bungalow for an evening meal before stand-by commenced. Prinz Wittgenstein was a tall, good-looking officer with a fine, reserved and disciplined personality. As a night fighter he did his utmost, shunned no danger and never considered his own life.