By now the Lancaster had fallen to just 4,000 feet and soon they would be flying over the high ground of Bavaria. Croxson took the parachute from its little rack outside the turret with elastic ropes over it, clipped it on to his harness and got back into his turret. James called out, ‘I’ve got to go. Good luck, chaps and everybody out.’
Only three men made it. Howie got out through the front and Sergeant M W Chilvers the mid-upper gunner came down from his turret and got out of the side door. Croxson brought his turret round to full port, opened the slide doors at the back, took care to get hold of his oxygen feed, his electric suit and his intercom cord and get it all out of the way. Then he got his feet on the gun butts and kicked himself out into space. And that was it. Suddenly he was hanging in the air in total silence with the breeze swishing through the cords of the parachute, an enormous black cloud above him. Away in the distance he saw the sky light up and he knew that it was the aircraft. They hadn’t made it. The next thing, Croxson thumped to the ground. ‘At night, you don’t know when you’re going to hit the ground.’
A maximum effort was ordered immediately against Berlin by 677 bombers on the night of 28/29 January and a full range of diversionary operations was put into operation. Eighteen Oboe Mosquitoes raided four of the most significant Nachtjagd airfields in Holland and 63 Stirlings and four Path Finder Halifaxes dropped mines in Kiel Bay five hours before the Main Force raid on the Big City. Six more Mosquitoes bombed Berlin four hours before the main attack went in and another four Mosquitoes made a diversionary raid on Hannover.
A 158 Squadron Halifax at Lissett and G-George a Halifax V on 76 Squadron at Holme-on-Spalding Moor crashed on take-off killing two men on the latter aircraft. Numbers were further diminished as one in ten bombers turned back over the North Sea. At Waddington Flight Lieutenant Ivan G ‘Joe’ Durston DFC RAAF, a pilot on 467 Squadron RAAF who had completed his tour, decided that he would fly one more op so that the four Australians in the crew of L-London could finish together. The cloud was well broken and the routes to the target went north over Northern Denmark on both the outward and return flights to further deplete the night fighter force but even so, the JLO still managed to concentrate large numbers of fighters over the target and 26 Halifaxes and 18 Lancasters were shot down. Two other Lancasters were lost with their crews in a mid air collision over Alsace. ‘Joe’ Durston’s brave gesture was in vain. All seven crew on L-London died when the bomber was shot down on the approach to Berlin.
At Elvington four Halifaxes on 77 Squadron were missing and four Halifax Vs on 434 Squadron never returned to Croft. Four Halifax IIs on 10 Squadron at Melbourne were never heard of again. Of 19 Lancasters on 97 Squadron that took off for Berlin, one had returned early and two were missing. Flight Lieutenant Charles Thomas Wilson DFC and crew were killed, so too Flying Officer Frank Allison’s. This pilot had flown 48 sorties and had been awarded the DFM in 1942 when he was flying Wellingtons in the Middle East. Another of 97 Squadron’s Lancasters, piloted by a tough Australian by the name of Flight Lieutenant Henry Stewart van Raalte, returned having failed to find the ‘Big City’. He bombed Kiel instead. Van Raalte’s rear gunner was decapitated by flak.
Two Lancaster IIIs on 83 Squadron failed to return to Wyton. S-Sugar flown by Flight Lieutenant Horace Robert Hyde was involved in a fatal collision with a 463 Squadron Lancaster outbound and crashed on the Danish border. Both crews were buried in Aabenraa Cemetery on 2 February. While outbound B-Baker flown by Pilot Officer William Simpson was attacked by a Ju 88C night fighter of II./NJG 3 crewed by Hauptmann Gerhard Raht, his Funker Feldwebel Anton Heinemann and Bordmechaniker Unteroffizier Werner Hesse, and controlled by the radar station ‘Star’ at Lütjenhorn in Northern Germany. At 02:37 the Lancaster exploded in the air and the wreckage was spread over a radius of 2.5 kilometres just north of the village of Varnæs. During the morning the surviving flyers began to show up. There were reports of parachutes found at Tråsbøl, Brobøl, Ullerup and Bovrup. Sergeant Thomas K McCash the flight engineer and Flight Sergeant John J Martin, navigator, were found dead in fields near Bovrup. One was not wearing a parachute.
At 07:32 hours a flyer knocked on the door at a farm in Ullerup and was picked up by the Wehrmacht. Simpson landed by parachute on the roof of the house next to the telephone exchange at Skoletoften 12 in Blans. He hurt his forehead when he fell from the roof and was taken to the exchange to have the wound dressed. None of the Danes present had any command of the English language but Simpson still tried to persuade them into hiding him but there were many German sympathizers in the village and no one dared to hide him. Someone had seen Simpson and at 09:20 two German soldiers arrived on a motorcycle and picked him up. At 14:23 a flyer came to the Ballegård farm in Blans and he was picked up by the Wehrmacht. Pilot Officer Ronald Pilgrim the air bomber landed near Ullerup and hid in a shack belonging to the Vicarage. When evening came he sneaked into the barn and was found around 9 o’clock by the son of Reverend Warncke who was away in hospital. Mrs Warncke called Reverend Sjellerup of Nybøl but he could not help and as a last resort they called Chief Constable Bjerre of Gråsten. He declared that he would inform the Wehrmacht where they could pick up Pilgrim.
McCash and Martin were both laid to rest in Aabenraa cemetery on 2 February. Air gunner Flight Sergeant John R Tree RAAF had landed in the sea off Alssund and drowned. He was found on 19 June and was laid to rest on 22 June. Pilgrim and Simpson and W/Op Sergeant W Livesey and Flight Sergeant J A Fell, air gunner were sent to Dulag Luft and on to PoW camps.
At Witchford two Lancasters on 115 Squadron were missing with only one survivor from both the crews. At Kirmington 166 Squadron also lost two Lancasters. There were no survivors on Pilot Officer Joe Horsley DFC’s crew on Z-Zebra. Five of Flying Officer C G Phelps RAAF crew On W-William were killed. They included the navigator, Master Sergeant W W Mitchell USAAF from Michigan. The Australian pilot and Pilot Officer E D Nesbitt RCAF were the only survivors and they were taken into captivity. A 466 Squadron RAAF Halifax at Leconfield and a 431 ‘Iroquois’ Squadron RCAF Halifax crashed on return at Matlaske in Norfolk and Croft respectively. Three other Halifaxes on 466 were shot down. Another ‘Iroquois’ Squadron crew bailed out off the Lincolnshire coast and two others were shot down. A 433 ‘Porcupine’ Squadron Halifax crew ditched in the North Sea off Hartlepool and another was abandoned near Thirsk, Yorkshire. A 434 ‘Bluenose’ Squadron RCAF Halifax at Croft piloted by Pilot Officer M F Flewelling RCAF crashed at Flixton in Yorkshire and one man was injured. Four other aircraft on the Squadron were shot down on Berlin.
At Pocklington two Halifax IIs on 102 Squadron were lost. One was S-Sugar flown by Flight Sergeant D Pugh, which was hit by flak as they came off the target. Losing fuel they finally had to ditch off the Danish coast. The sea was rough with waves up to 20 feet high but it was daylight and the weather was good. Pugh ditched successfully and the crew scrambled into their dinghy but later the next day a heavy wave capsized their craft and all the crew were flung into the sea. Pughb and three others managed to clamber back into the dinghy but the rear-gunner, bomb-aimer and the flight engineer remained in the sea, clinging to ropes. The men in the dinghy tried vainly to get them into the craft but they were too exhausted and one by one the three men in the water drifted off silently and alone and they were never seen again. Two days later the dinghy was spotted by a Warwick, which dropped two Lindholme dinghies in the rough sea to no avail and next day when another Warwick dropped another dinghy the four men were too exhausted to reach it. Finally, after three days adrift in the open sea the four survivors, all suffering from hypothermia, were picked up by a high speed launch from Montrose. Flight Sergeant James Craig Graham, the Canadian navigator, died before the HSL reached Scotland.
Crews had just one night’s rest before the bombing of Berlin resumed on the night of 30/31 January, this time by a force of 534 aircraft. It was the third raid on the Big City in four nights and crews were understandably unhappy about it. And as it was the start
of a new moon period a quarter- to half-moon was expected during the outward flight. Also, the only diversionary raids were by 22 Mosquitoes on Elberfeld and five more on Brunswick. While the outward route for the Main Force was again a northerly one it was not as far north as the previous raid on Berlin. The night fighters were unable to intercept the Main Force over the sea and the bomber stream was well on the way to the target before they met with any opposition. At the target the bombing was made through complete cloud cover. Twin-engined Tame Boars wreaked havoc, continuing their attacks until well into the return flight and they accounted for all 33 bombers that were shot down.34 Pilot Officer Alec Riley’s crew on 467 Squadron RAAF at Waddington who were four and half hours late and given up for lost on 2/3 January, crashed in the target area following a direct hit from flak. Riley the ‘pukka Aussie’ and five of his crew were killed. Q-Queenie, a 106 Squadron Lancaster at Metheringham, crashed in the North Sea with the loss of all the crew, and a 640 Squadron Halifax crashed near Catfoss Manor in Yorkshire, killing all the crew.
It was clear now that new British tactics and new countermeasures and a ‘fattening up’ of the Main Force would be necessary before a resumption of raids deep into Germany. Replacement crews and aircraft were on their way and existing crews were told that they would not be required for operations for nearly two weeks.35
Roy Keen on 166 Squadron flew one or two of the back-to-back night raids:
My first op – I think it’s like everything else – when you’re sitting on the grass ready for take-off, your mind’s in a bit of a whirl, you wonder what the hell’s going to happen. But once you get in the aeroplane and take off, you’re busy. The Lancaster was cold, cramped and noisy – other than that it was a lovely aeroplane! I’ll never forget the first trip we did, which was to Berlin. It always had a bit of a name, did Berlin, the ‘Big City’ and I was absolutely amazed at the sight of the target in the middle of a big raid – it was fantastic. It’s like Blackpool lights, times twenty! It was very unreal – you looked down and saw coloured lights, you saw aircraft underneath you, above you. But, you don’t think anything’s going to happen to you. I’d seen quite a lot of aircraft go down. I suppose it could get to you a bit. I was usually intent in looking out for trouble, but I can’t say that I was particularly nervous. Operations did affect some people worse than others. A bit of a fuss was made when you got back to base. Egg and bacon and if anyone didn’t come back you had theirs! You just had to dismiss it – sometimes four aircraft would disappear off the scene, but the more you did, you realised your time may not be far away.
On 12/13 February ten Lancasters on 617 Squadron carried out the third operation on the Anthéor viaduct 15 miles west of Cannes on the coastal railway line leading to Italy. As on the two previous raids the 90-foot stone arches curving back across the beach at the foot of a ravine resisted all attempts to destroy them. Two low level Lancasters flown by Wing Commander Cheshire and Squadron Leader Mick Martin were damaged by anti aircraft guns, which mortally wounded Flight Lieutenant ‘Bob’ Hay, the bomb aimer on Martin’s aircraft. Martin had headed for Ajaccio in northern Corsica after one of his crew confirmed that the island was in Allied hands – he had read it in the News of the World the Sunday before – but he finally put P-Popsie down at Elmas Field in South Sardinia where a doctor was available. They buried Bob Hay in Sardinia. The other Lancasters landed back at Ford where the weather threatened to prevent them from returning to Woodhall Spa. Next day Squadron Leader William Reid Suggitt DFC RCAF thought that he could make it to Woodhall Spa and he offered a seat to Squadron Leader Thomas Williams Lloyd DSO, the immaculate, monocled 52-year-old Intelligence Officer. Lloyd accepted the invitation but declared that he must spruce himself up with a shave first. Eight men clambered aboard J-Jig, which five minutes later hit a hill ten miles northeast of Chichester and crashed at Waltham Down, Sussex. Bill Suggitt was alive and delirious in his seat when found but he never regained consciousness and he died in Chichester Hospital at 16.00 hours on the 15th. Everyone else was killed instantly. Lloyd was a First World War veteran. Flight Sergeant John Pulford DFM was Guy Gibson’s flight engineer on the Dams raid and Pilot Officer Johnnie Gordon DFC RAAF was on his second tour. Don Charlwood, whose crew had been the first on 103 Squadron to complete a tour, was best man at Gordon’s wedding at Northfield on 26 January. One of twenty navigators who had left Australia to train in Canada, Charlwood and seventeen others made it to Bomber Command where only five of these returned, with twelve dead and one PoW. Gordon had told Charlwood that on 617 Squadron ‘Apparently there’s no such thing as a “tour”. You just stay till the war’s over, or till you’re over, or till you’ve had a bellyful.’
On the morning of Sunday 13 February after a rest of more than a fortnight ‘Bomber’ Harris decided to mount a maximum effort on the Big City, but bad weather caused the operation to be cancelled. The operation was laid on for the next day but heavy snowfalls caused the operation to be cancelled again. It was not until Tuesday 15 February that the offensive could re-commence. That night the German capital was the target for just over 890 Lancasters, Halifaxes and Mosquitoes. This was the largest force sent to Berlin and the largest non-1,000 bomber force dispatched to any target.36 It was also the first time that more than 500 Lancasters (561, of which 226 were from 5 Group) and more than 300 Halifaxes (314) were sent on a raid. The number of Halifaxes was increased due to the return of 420 ‘Snowy Owl’ Squadron and 424 ‘Tiger’ Squadron from the Middle East. (Another Canadian squadron – 425 ‘Alouette’ RCAF – would be ready with its Lancasters for the next raid.) In addition a series of diversion and support operations was mounted, chief among these being the 23 Oboe Mosquitoes which were to attack five night fighter airfields in Holland, and 43 Stirlings and four Path Finder Halifaxes which would lay mines in Kiel Bay. Another diversionary ploy would be flown by 24 Lancasters of 8 Group on Frankfurt-on-Oder.
On 625 Squadron at Kelstern Sergeant Bill Ashurst’s eleventh Lancaster operation began badly when, due to a mechanical fault Y-Yorker took off 25 minutes later than the other aircraft, at 17.25 hours. At Leconfield Ken Handley, a British flight engineer on 466 Squadron RAAF prepared for his first Halifax operation. He would find the trip not as frightening as he expected. There were no searchlights owing to ten tenths cloud base, 2,000 feet tops and 6,000 feet over the target and only light flak below them. They bombed at 22,300 feet and came off the target at 24,000 feet. There were numerous fighter flares around the target and on the return trip and evasive action was taken, but their luck held and they had no combats with fighters. Handley however endured a tense last half hour on the 7 hour 30 minute flight when No. 4 tank iced up and they had ‘no joy’ with it for ten minutes. The JLOs had plotted the bomber stream soon after it left the English coast but the swing over Denmark for the approach flight proved too far distant for many of the German fighters. A 7 Squadron Lancaster was lost when it exploded over the Baltic with just one survivor. A 77 Squadron Halifax, a 419 Squadron Halifax and a 619 Squadron Lancaster also went down in the waters of the Baltic. There were no survivors on any of the aircraft. Halifax O-Orange on 158 Squadron flown by Flight Sergeant William C M Hogg ran into flak over Denmark. Flight Sergeant R McDonald recalled:
Our port inner engine burst into flames and the aircraft went into a vertical dive. Our Skipper, Bill Hogg, regained control after 10,000 feet, but our port outer was now on fire. He extinguished the fires, feathered the props and jettisoned the load, but could not maintain height. Not sure whether we were over sea or land, we decided to stay with the aircraft. The starboard inner was now faltering as we skimmed a house and crash-landed in a snow covered field. The nose burst open on impact as did the overloaded fuel tanks and one engine tore loose. But miraculously there was no fire and all seven of us stepped out of the wreckage.
They had come down near Grasten in Denmark. All the crew were taken into captivity.
Y-Yorker on 625 Squadron was attacked by a night fighter and the Lancaster wa
s set on fire. Bill Ashurst instructed Flying Officer Harry Proskurniak the Canadian bomb aimer to ‘get rid of the bomb load’ which included a ‘cookie’. The aircraft was out of control and losing height and Harry frantically tried to open the forward escape hatch. He says:
I must have lapsed into unconsciousness when trying to open it. When I came to it must have been the abrupt jerk of my parachute opening which really woke me up. The parachute really saved my life but I’ll never know how I opened it! For me it was a miracle! I still keep asking myself the question, ‘Why was my life spared and not that of any of my comrades?’
In the village of Fjelstrup the occupying Germans left the scattered bodies of Bill Ashurst and five crew members for several days before collecting them for a military funeral. Harry Proskurniak was eventually taken prisoner.
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