Bomber Command

by Martin Bowman

  A record 2,643 tons of bombs was dropped through thick cloud over the ‘Big City’ by 806 aircraft out of the 891 dispatched. The aiming point was marked by red and green stars and the ‘blind backers up’ were ordered to keep it marked throughout the raid with green TIs. The attack lasted for 39 minutes. Nine Lancasters and six Halifaxes acted as primary ‘blind markers’, dropping their flares two minutes before the arrival of eleven special Lancasters acting as backers-up and equipped with H2S. They dropped their markers at the rate of one every two minutes and were followed by three Lancasters and eleven Halifaxes flying in pairs. After these came the visual ‘backers-up’, 20 Lancasters, dropping flares at double that rate and their supporters, 58 Lancasters and the Halifaxes, and finally, the Main Force, divided into five waves of an average number of 140 aircraft. Window was dropped throughout the attack until supplies were exhausted. The attack was remarkable for its precision, though no glimpse of the city was seen. The last arrivals were able to report the glow of large fires and a column of smoke rising 30,000 feet into the murky air. Damage was extensive with almost 600 large fires and 572 ‘medium’ fires; some war industries and almost 1,500 houses and temporary wooden barracks were destroyed. The most important industrial target hit was the Siemens and Halske works, which manufactured electrical apparatus. Several of its many buildings were gutted including the switch-gear and dynamo workshops. One hundred and forty two other factories were also hit, as were a power station, two gas works, Dr. Goebbels’ broadcasting station and five tramway depots.

  The diversion to Frankfurt-on-Oder failed to draw any night fighters away from the Berlin area but the JLO ordered his fighter pilots not to fly over the capital, leaving the target area free for the flak. So although fourteen combats took place above the ‘Big City’, the night fighters sought for the most part to intercept the bombers on their way in and out and left the defence of the target area itself to the guns. Forty-three Main Force bombers failed to return. Six other aircraft were lost on the return over England. At Oakington four Lancaster IIIs on 7 Squadron were missing in action. One of them was flown by Sergeant Ken Doyle. The crew could see Berlin in the distance when trouble began. Flight Sergeant Geoffrey Charles Chapman Smith RAAF, the tail gunner, was searching the port beam when, from the corner of his eye, he saw three white lights. He swung his guns, saw a green light and realized that it was an enemy fighter with its identification lamps on. Smith gave the warning and the Lancaster dived to port as four lines of tracer streamed from the wings of the fighter, now close enough to identify as a Bf 110. Smith poured 150 rounds into the fighter, there was a mighty flash and it blew up. Four more lines of tracer appeared; a FW 190 was coming in from behind. The Lancaster dived and lost the enemy but a cannon shell had hit Smith’s leg and he was in great pain. His turret was unserviceable and his parachute bag was on fire. Other shells had plastered the Lancaster from its tail along its fuselage up to the mid-upper turret. The captain called his crew to check for casualties. There was no answer from the mid-upper turret and he sent the wireless operator back to see what had happened. The gunner was on the floor without his oxygen mask, almost unconscious. His turret had been hit and he had tried to beat out the flames of burning oil from a burst pipe, using his helmet. Lack of oxygen had overcome him. The wireless operator jammed an oxygen tube in the man’s mouth just in time to save him and then climbed into the mid-upper turret to watch for fighters. The captain called Smith on the intercom and told him he was sending help. But Smith refused to be moved and he continued to work the guns by hand. The navigator dealt with the burning parachute.

  Crossing a flak belt the Lancaster was hit again. Two engines had stopped when at last the pilot got clear of the defences and crossed the coast out to sea. Smith’s oxygen mask had frozen and he had taken it off and was breathing the dangerous rarefied air. Over the sea the crew chopped the bombs away and then came aft to free Smith. His turret door had frozen in and this, too, had to be chopped away. Still conscious, Smith tried to pull himself out but could not free his right leg which was shattered and twisted around the ammunition belt and controls. The turret was drenched in blood. It took an hour to free him. They gave him morphine and laid him on the floor of the fuselage. The pilot prepared for a belly-landing in case the tyres had been shot up but he found the bomb doors would not close and decided to alight on the damaged undercarriage. The bomb aimer and wireless operator lay on each side of Smith to protect him in case of a crash but the pilot made a good landing. The Lancaster came in at Woodbridge and there the fuselage was hacked away and Smith and the wounded mid-upper gunner were carried out. Smith’s leg was amputated next morning. ‘If it hadn’t been for the Skipper, we’d never have got back at all,’ he said later.

  A 106 Squadron Lancaster crashed at Timberland Fen killing four of the crew and a fifth crewmember died of his injuries later. A 420 ‘Snowy Owl’ Squadron RCAF Halifax crashed at Tholthorpe killing two of the crew and injuring the others and a 78 Squadron Halifax was abandoned on return to Breighton. All the crew were killed. A 630 Squadron Lancaster returning to Coningsby crashed near Old Bolingbroke without injury to any of the crew. At Elvington three Halifaxes on 77 Squadron were lost. At Leconfield four Halifaxes failed to return. Two of the Halifaxes were on 640 Squadron, one crashing at Coxwold and the other at Cloughton in Yorkshire. One complete crew was lost. On 466 Squadron RAAF no word was received from F-Freddie, which had gone down over Holland with its crew, or M-Mother, which was abandoned near Papenburg. M-Mother’s crew were taken prisoner. As they crossed the coast of England Ken Handley looked at his fuel gauges, which showed that their Halifax had no fuel remaining. His pilot asked permission to land immediately without any ‘stacking’. This they did, Handley expecting the engines to cut at any moment. ‘What a relief to be taxiing along the runway and perimeter track’ Handley wrote later. It was not until the following morning that the ground crew said that they could not get any fuel into the bomb bay tank – it was still full. Handley had forgotten to pump the 230 gallons into tanks 1 and 3 after leaving the target area!

  This raid marked the close of the true ‘Battle of Berlin’. A raid on the Big City was ordered on each of the following three days – 16, 17 and 18 February – but each time the operation had to be cancelled because of unfavourable weather conditions. Peter Geraghty on 102 Squadron recalled:

  On this particular day we had been briefed on the afternoon. The plan was to put as many bombs as possible, in the shortest time possible, on Berlin. This huge city seemed to represent all that was evil. I personally felt that at last I was in the action – frightened but fulfilled. Of all the targets, Berlin was the big one. The briefing finished at 16.00 hours. Take off was set for 23.00 hours, seven hours of tension before we could get going. I decided to go to my Nissen hut and lie down for a while, pretending to sleep but finding my mind in a turmoil of dread. I stayed there for a couple of hours and then heard a loud rattling of the latch on the door followed by my flight engineer saying, ‘What are you doing in there? Ops are scrubbed.’ I don’t think I’ve heard such welcome words.

  Only one more raid took place on the German capital and that would not be for another month. The next big raid by Bomber Command was on the night of 19/20 February when the target was Leipzig and its aircraft assembly factories, as part of a true round-the-clock offensive in concert with the American Air Forces.37 The 816 RAF bombers that were detailed flew towards Denmark and then down to Zwolle in Holland and across Germany between Hamburg and the Ruhr. It was hoped that this route and a ‘spoof’ feint over the North Sea by an OTU force and a Mosquito ‘spoof’ force carrying on due east to Berlin, as the Main Force turned sharply south to Leipzig at Brandenburg would keep German fighters back. Unfortunately the JLO did not take the bait and another Mosquito ‘spoof’ on Dresden failed. Meanwhile, the forecast steady head wind had turned into a tail wind in excess of 100 mph and it caused chaos. Many crews arrived at the target early and then orbited the area waiting for the Path Fi
nder markers to go down. Some crews did not wait, and using their H2S, they bombed before Zero Hour. Pandemonium ensued when the markers did go down, as several hundred bomber crews raced in from all directions and tried to bomb at once before leaving the area as quickly as possible. Brian Soper recalls:

  On this raid we took an additional pilot, a ‘2nd Dickie’ trip, a first raid for a new pilot. This was supposed to be unlucky but we made it. There was 10/10s full cloud, which was very thin, but both ground and sky markers were visible. The duration of this trip was about 7¾ hours.

  The Main Force lost 78 bombers – 44 Lancasters and 34 Halifaxes – Bomber Command’s worst casualties so far. About 20 of these were victims of flak while the rest were shot down by a very efficiently deployed Tame Boar operation by 294 aircraft (only 17 of which were lost).38 Two Lancasters on 103 Squadron collided on the return to Elsham Wolds. One of the aircraft managed to crash land at the base without injury to the crew but five men on board the second aircraft were killed. A 158 Squadron Halifax at Lissett crashed at Alwick in Yorkshire killing all seven crew and Q-Queenie a 166 Squadron Lancaster crash-landed at Manston on its return to Kirmington, all the crew suffering injuries.

  At one American base the door was flung back and:

  A group of fly-boys lurched in, singing with drink-sodden voices: ‘Coming in on a wing and a prayer.’ They made up in volume what they lacked in harmony. Someone turned up the radio to drown them into a giggling silence. Over the radio a woman’s voice was telling the recipe for the morrow, which was Woolton Pie. It sounded revolting to an American palate. The BBC news came on. We mostly didn’t listen, because its content was really designed for the British ear. But towards the end we crewmen caught a flash that made our ears prick up: ‘Royal Air Force bombers last night raided Leipzig. Large sections of the city were left in flames with considerable damage to the railway yards . . .’ Then in the crisp British accent: ‘Seventy-nine of our aircraft are missing . . .’

  ‘Jesus H. Christ!’ said somebody. ‘I didn’t know they had that many.’39

  Brian Soper was on Arthur Rew’s crew, who took a ‘2nd dickey’ pilot on the 7¾ hour trip on Leipzig. Soper, who had by now flown ten raids on Berlin, recalls:

  Although we felt sorry for them, we were happier when Halifaxes and Stirlings were also flying’ ‘Hallies’ rarely got above 18,000 feet, which we felt took some of the flak: this was really only wishful thinking. However, later when some of the Halifaxes were fitted with radial engines, the roles were reversed and they could get higher than we could.

  Four of the missing Halifaxes on Leipzig were on 35 Squadron, one of which exploded over Gohre and another was abandoned near Brandenburg. J-Johnny was hit by a Ju 88 armed with Schräge Musik at 23,000 feet near Beedenbostel in central Germany near Celle. The port inner engine caught fire and Squadron Leader Julian Sale DSO* DFC called ‘Bail Out, bail out, bail out!’ His highly decorated crew included the navigation leader, Squadron Leader Gordon Carter DFC*, who had also evaded capture the previous February. Because he had been through it all before Carter removed his helmet because ‘a lot of chaps were hanged by their intercom leads going out’ and bailed out. He had on his back under the parachute harness, a pack of escape items such as wire cutters and some civilian clothes bought in France during his evasion. On landing in a lane in a forest he went into the trees and put the clothes on. He remembered that he was carrying a revolver that he had bought in Huntingdon in case he ever fell into a city where he thought that civilians might mob him. Carter decided that he had better get rid of it. The navigation leader was free for 48 hours but a sailor shooting crows in a field did not believe his story that he was a French factory worker. Carter was apprehended and he was taken to a Luftwaffe airfield where he was visited by Hauptmann Ludwig ‘Luk’ Meister who told him that he was the pilot who had shot him down.40 Carter, who was still wearing his French clothes, was asked, ‘Were you trying to do what your Skipper succeeded in doing last year? Apparently the Hauptmann had read all about it in the Toronto ski club magazine. Carter opened his shirt and showed his interrogator his RCAF identity disc. Four others on the crew were also taken prisoner.

  Julian Sale meanwhile had crash-landed the Halifax because Flight Sergeant Kenneth Knight, the 19-year-old rear gunner had not answered the call to abandon the aircraft. Knight was found dead. Sale was badly injured and he died of his wounds in hospital near Frankfurt on 20 March. Carter would spend the next 14 months as a prisoner in Stalag Luft III. After his release he made his way from England to Paris and rekindled his romance with Janine Jouanjean who was working at her grandfather’s tailor’s shop in Carhaix. Her entire family had survived the war; Carter’s arrival coinciding with the return of her brother and brother-in-law from concentration camps. Carter and Janine married on 11 June 1945. Just over a fortnight later she went with her husband to Buckingham palace where Carter received a bar to his DFC from King George VI. Before he left for Canada to be demobilised he took Janine to Graveley and showed her where he had written her name above his bunk.

  The attack on Stuttgart detailed for the bitter cold night of 20/21 February got off to a bad start when a 49 Squadron Lancaster swung out of control on take-off from Fiskerton and crashed and caught fire. All the crew scrambled clear before the Lancaster exploded. At East Kirkby on the gentle southern edge of the Lincolnshire Wolds a 630 Squadron Lancaster III also swung out of control and careered across a road near the base before the bomb load exploded, killing six of the crew and injuring the rear-gunner. Y-Yorker a 427 ‘Lion’ Squadron RCAF Halifax III, which crashed at Northallerton minutes after taking off from Leeming, burst into flames and all seven crew died in the inferno.

  Over 590 bombers reached Stuttgart where the target was cloud covered and the bombing scattered. Brian Soper described the trip as ‘quite a standard raid with ground markers. There were heavy fires still seen one hour after leaving the target.’ Night fighter activity was reduced because the bomber stream flew a North Sea sweep to keep fighter attacks to a minimum and a diversionary feint towards Munich successfully drew the German fighters up two hours before the main force flew inland. Just nine bombers were brought down. A 156 Squadron Lancaster, which was hit by flak while at 20,000 feet on the homeward flight, exploded killing everyone on board except the pilot, Flight Lieutenant D R MacKay DFC RCAF, who was on his 33rd operation of his tour, and who was thrown clear to be taken prisoner. At Bardney there was no word from N-Nuts and K-King, both Lancasters on 9 Squadron falling prey to enemy action. All 14 crew members were killed. Among the dead was Pilot Officer William John ‘Bill’ Chambers the pilot of N-Nuts, whose crew had begun their tour on 20 October to Leipzig, and his bomb aimer Technical Sergeant John J Hannon USAAF, a New Yorker from the Bronx.41

  Four aircraft crashed in England on their return. Lancaster A-Apple on 97 Squadron, which had reported a mid-air collision while leaving the target area, almost made it back to Bourn only to crash just 300 yards short of the runway. All seven crew were killed. B-Baker, a 115 Squadron Lancaster, crashed at Shillington near Bedford trying to make it home to Witchford in Cambridgeshire. There were no survivors. A 460 Squadron RAAF Lancaster, which encountered near blizzard conditions on return to Binbrook flew into trees near North Witham south of Grantham and exploded killing the pilot, Flying Officer Francis Allan ‘Frank’ Cleveland RAAF, and his six crew. A 78 Squadron Halifax crash-landed at Dunsfold, Surrey on return to Elvington.

  Two further effective Tame Boar operations were directed against Bomber Command raids before February was out, the first on the night of the 24/25th when 209 Tame Boar crews destroyed all except two of the 33 Lancasters and Halifaxes of a 734-strong force that were lost raiding a ball-bearing factory at Schweinfurt. Pilot Officer Alf Hullah and the crew on B-Baker on 166 Squadron at Kirmington was on their way when 12 miles west of Grimsby they were involved in a collision with a Lancaster on 460 Squadron RAAF, which was on a night exercise from Binbrook. This Lancaster crashed at Willoughton Manor
in Lincolnshire. B-Baker crashed in flames at Market Rasen with four dead in the aircraft. Two men who bailed out also died. A crash team from Binbrook went straight to the scene of the crash and found burning incendiaries scattered over a wide area with Sergeant Thomas Leo Connolly RCAF the mid-upper gunner alive but trapped in his turret. While Corporal Prize and Aircraftsman Tinsley sprayed foam on the aircraft’s unexploded 4,000lb bomb, Corporal Gordon and Leading Aircraftsman Callaghan pulled the trapped gunner from the burning wreckage. In the meantime the Binbrook station MO, Flight Lieutenant Roberts, had driven an ambulance over the fields to a spot close to the wreckage and he administered first aid, but Connolly died of his injuries in hospital the following day.

  Lancaster L-London on 12 Squadron at Wickenby was lost with all seven members of Flight Sergeant William Alfred Lampkin’s crew, including 1st Lieutenant S W Penner the navigator who was from California.

  Brian Soper on 626 Squadron recalled that flak and searchlights were very concentrated. He particularly remembered the loss of a crew with an Australian pilot, Flying Officer Jack Pierce Hutchinson DFC, who was very popular. ‘It should have been his final trip – I suppose it was,’ recalls Soper. ‘He had previously arranged a big party in the mess to celebrate – he was one who ‘always came back.’ All the crew were killed in the aircraft, which crashed at Marsal in the Moselle.

  Flight Sergeant John Clare Gilbertson-Pritchard on 1678 Conversion Flight at Waterbeach was the second pilot of a Lancaster II on 514 Squadron. Just after they bombed the target a 4lb incendiary dropped from above into the aircraft by the navigator’s table and was thrown to safety by the wireless operator. It was reported later that his pilot’s nerves were affected by the falling incendiary. It was also reported that there was ‘slight damage to navigator’s table’!42