Bomber Command
Page 34
Gazing out the back of Lancaster E-Easy’s rear turret at 20,000 feet outbound to Schweinfurt, Flight Sergeant Dennis ‘Jim’ Chapman on 61 Squadron at Coningsby heard a noise in the back end of the aircraft that sounded like ‘somebody rattling a dustbin lid’. Chapman was on his 30th and final op of his tour. The noise in the back end of the Lancaster was followed by a glow from underneath the rear end of the bomber and at this point Chapman realised that they were under attack by a night fighter. The noise was cannon fire. The mid-upper gunner had picked up their attacker as well. Within seconds Flight Lieutenant N D Webb RNZAF the pilot had ordered the crew to bail out. Chapman opened the doors of his rear turret, disentangled himself from belts of ammunition and got onto the bulkhead but the engines were still running so he got back in his turret, plugged the intercom in and called his pilot. The New Zealander thought that there was a ghost in the aircraft! ‘What are you doing there?’ Webb said. ‘I told you to bail out!’ Chapman asked him about their position relative to the Swiss border but Webb left him in no doubt that he had got to bail out. Coming along the aircraft to the exit towards him was the navigator who was in flames. Flight Sergeant C J Collingworth DFM the wireless operator was badly wounded in the neck. Both men bailed out. Before he left the Lancaster Chapman fired his guns at the attacking aircraft and it went down belching black clouds of smoke. Chapman and Webb and four other members of the crew became prisoners of war but Sergeant John William Brown, the 18-year-old flight engineer, had leaped from the aircraft without his parachute and he was killed. They were victims to that deadly tune played out in the night sky by Schräge Musik.
On the night of 25/26 February nearly 600 bombers carried out the first large raid on Augsburg, which was made in clear weather conditions. As part of the diversion and support operations, 131 aircraft laid mines in Kiel Bay and 22 Mosquitoes attacked enemy night fighter airfields in Holland and 15 other Mosquito aircraft carried out diversionary raids on four towns to the north of the Augsburg routes. Guided by accurate ground-marking by the Path Finders, the Main Force aircraft were able to release more than 2,000 tons of high explosive onto the beautiful and historic centre below, devastating the whole area including the Rathaus, which was completely destroyed and wiping out 3,000 dwellings and damaging a further 5,000 houses in a conflagration of fire and explosion. More than a thousand fires that were soon started quickly became uncontrollable as the temperature on this February night was minus 18°C so that the River Lech was frozen over and many of the water hoses also froze. Brian Soper wrote:
Another 8½ hour trip with yellow route markers. We bombed on green and red TIs. Smoke was seen up to 12,000ft. The German propaganda ministry publicized the raid as an example of ‘terror bombing. Ninety thousand people were de-housed and they left the city in droves. The flak defences were weak and various diversions and the splitting of the main bomber force into two waves helped keep bomber losses to a minimum, but 165 twin-engined Tame Boars claimed 19 bombers. Altogether, 23 aircraft were lost, one of the crews bailing out over Switzerland where they were interned. At least four of the losses were due to collisions.
Halifax C-Charlie on 432 ‘Leaside’ Squadron at East Moor flown by 1st Lieutenant A L Lubold USAAF was attacked and set on fire by a night fighter at 22,000 feet near Ülm. Had they come down in the Augsburg area many would not have given much for their chances of survival but the American pilot and all except two of his crew survived and they were taken prisoner. On the return C-Charlie, a XV Squadron Lancaster at Mildenhall, crashed at Lakenheath killing four of the crew and injuring the three others. A Lancaster on 207 Squadron at Spilsby crashed killing all seven crew. Three Halifaxes and a Stirling were lost on the mine laying operations and a Stirling on 90 Squadron at Tuddenham crashed at Denham Castle, Suffolk on the return from its Gardening sortie. Five of the crew were killed and the two others were injured.
Main Force raids followed to Stuttgart and to aircraft factory and railway targets in France and Belgium. Trappes, one of six key rail facilities in the Paris area, was the first in the series of railway targets to be bombed, on 6/7 March, not so much because of its importance but because the 160 acre site lay 16 miles WSW of the centre of Paris in relatively open country where there was less risk of heavy French casualties. Even so the north side contained two built up areas. The northeast group of sidings contained a locomotive depot that was estimated to contain 48 electric locomotives, which operated on the electrified Paris-Le Mans section. By 19.25 hours all the bombers had left their Yorkshire bases. Five Halifaxes in 6 Group had to be left because of technical problems and there were aborts en route. Pilot Officer Cameron on 158 Squadron lost his escape hatch when it blew open as he was taking off from Lissett and it took the crew an hour to fix the hatch while heading for Trappes. Two other Halifaxes suffered the loss of one engine when outbound but carried on to bomb the target and return on three engines in the face of a headwind.
The Main Force finally consisted of just over 250 Halifax bombers and six Mosquitoes. 6 Group formed the first wave and attacked between zero hour and 20.51 hours; 4 Group followed between 21.11 and 21.17 hours. In all, 3,650 bombs, over 50 per cent of which were 1,000 pounders, were dropped in near perfect conditions and 288 bombs hit the target area, destroying 75 per cent of the engine sheds and 35 per cent of the small railway buildings. There were extremely heavy concentrations of craters throughout the sidings and all internal lines were blocked. At least six locomotives were destroyed.43 Although the sky was clear over France the bombers made their return over England in drizzle and poor visibility and aircraft had to be diverted to airfields in southern England. The night following over 300 aircraft successfully attacked the railway yards at Le Mans and again no aircraft were lost.
Meanwhile, on the night of 2/3 March, 15 Lancasters of 617 Squadron using the Stabilised Automatic Bombsight (SABS) set out to bomb the GSP machine-tools factory and the adjacent BMW aero-engine repair complex on the outskirts of Albert, 15 miles northeast of Amiens. All of the crews had been trained to group eight bombs within 50 yards of the target on Wainfleet Sands, from a height of 15,000 feet and they were expected to continue practising until they could consistently group them closer to a maximum of 20 yards. The target was covered with camouflage netting on which roads and buildings had been superimposed. The weather in the target area was unfavourable, with a great deal of cloud, severe icing and static electricity. Leonard Cheshire located the factory by identifying the surrounding landmarks in the light of the flares accurately dropped by the squadron’s flare force. He carried out the usual ‘shallow’ dive approach but his stores hung-up. Squadron Leader Les Munro then laid his incendiaries and spot fires nearly on the site and 12,000lb HCs and 1,000 pounders obliterated both factories. The GSP factory was so completely wrecked that all attempts to get it working again were abandoned. The BMW buildings were destroyed or very badly damaged. The French management had been able to delay delivery of around six months’ worth of production on site and this was also destroyed.
Two nights later, the needle-bearing factory works at La Ricamerie at St-Etienne near Lyons was the target for 15 Lancasters of 617 Squadron. It was the smallest and most difficult target yet. It was in a narrow valley with 4,000 feet hills on each side and the factory, in the middle of a built-up area, was only 40 yards by 70 yards. Met forecast good weather but unbroken cloud in the target area caused Cheshire to abort the operation. Another attempt was made on 10/11 March with 16 Lancasters, four of them acting as markers. The cloud in the valley was broken and Cheshire found, after five dicey runs, that he could see the factory only at the last moment. On his sixth run, he judged the distance, dropped the nose of his Lancaster and the incendiaries landed on the roof of the main factory building but then bounced off and ignited about 100 yards beyond. He summarised this result to the second marker who used the burning incendiaries as a datum but released his load too early so that it undershot. The third marker’s load repeated the behaviour of Cheshire’s initial e
ffort. The fourth marker came in on a much steeper dive and his markers effectively stayed in the middle of the factory buildings. Cheshire then instructed the bombing Lancasters to aim at this ‘central marker’. Photo reconnaissance revealed that only the wall round the factory remained; the rest had been completely destroyed and there was no damage outside. Another 86 Lancasters of 5 Group carried out moonlight raids on four factories in France. At Clermont-Ferrand 80 miles west of Lyons, 33 aircraft bombed the Michelin rubber works once again and 53 aircraft attacked targets at Châteauroux and Ossun. One Lancaster, which crashed in the target area killing all the crew was lost on the operation on Clermont-Ferrand.
It began snowing for days, and runways had to be cleared and ice removed from the wings of aircraft. On the bitter cold night of 13/14 March, 213 Halifaxes and nine Mosquitoes attacked the Maroc railway station and rail lines at Le Mans. Fifteen locomotives and 800 wagons were destroyed. Two nights’ later the railway yards at Amiens was the objective for 140 aircraft, while an aero-engine factory at Woippy near Metz close to the Franco-German border was detailed to receive a visit from 22 Lancasters of 5 Group. They flew through 10/10ths cloud all the way and the raid was aborted by Leonard Cheshire when he found total cloud cover over the target just before the bombing force reached the area. It was so cold that one crewmember’s helmet stuck to his face and later, when he took it off, a couple of square inches of skin came away with the studs.
On the way home the ‘Monica’ tail-mounted warning device in the Lancaster flown by Flying Officer Warren Duffy RCAF picked up a contact to port at a range of about 3,600 feet. At 2,700 feet range Sergeant Tom McLean the ‘hard-boiled’ Scottish rear-gunner could see that there were two Ju 88s flying in close proximity to one another. Past experience – on a previous tour of operations he had claimed five German fighters – convinced him that 45 per cent tracer and 55 per cent armour piercing rather than the regulation ball, tracer, incendiary and AP ammunition was the most effective combination, especially if an attacker could be brought to close range. He had kept this information about the ammunition from the rest of the crew. Even the nose gunner and ‘Red’ Evans the Canadian mid upper gunner who both used regulation loadings, were unaware of it. On intercom McLean told Duffy, ‘Prepare to corkscrew port!’ Then a FW 190 Zahme Sau (Tame Boar) free-lance night fighter was sighted, flying abreast of the Lancaster at about 1,500 feet with its navigation lights on, probably trying to distract the air gunners from the fighters astern. As one of the Ju 88s closed, McLean gave the order ‘Go!’ and Duffy carried out a violent corkscrew just as the fighter opened fire. The first burst sent a bullet through McLean’s hand. Duffy put the Lancaster into another violent corkscrew as a second attack came in but McLean still managed to hit the enemy fighter’s port engine before calling ‘Drop’ over the intercom. Immediately the flight engineer throttled back all four Merlins and the Lancaster rapidly lost speed forcing the attacker to overshoot. McLean fired again and the flight engineer opened up the throttles again. The night fighter fell away in flames.
On intercom McLean said ‘Easy’ and Duffy ceased corkscrewing. But now the second night fighter carried out a curving attack from slightly below. Duffy performed yet another corkscrew as McLean and Evans opened fire and their attacker plunged into the void trailing fire and flames. Another twin-engined night fighter now approached from astern, moving from port to starboard. At this point Duffy spotted some cloud ahead and below and in a shallow dive steered the aircraft towards it but the night fighter came in and he was forced into yet another corkscrew, this time to starboard. Duffy must have wondered how the Lancaster could take such repeated punishment. At once McLean and the flight engineer went into their very well-rehearsed manoeuvre and the gunners opened up at close range knocking pieces off and causing the night fighter to nose up with its port wing and starboard engine on fire before it entered a flat spin until a red glow illuminated the cloud below. At this point the FW 190 decided to turn off its lights and attack from abeam of the Lancaster, which prevented McLean from firing but Red Evans returned fire and the fighter sped away into the night.
Flight Lieutenant Warren Alvin Duffy was killed later that summer, flying a Mosquito, which crashed at Wainfleet Sands in Lincolnshire during a practice on 7 August. His navigator Flying Officer Philip Ingleby also died.
On the night of 15/16 March the main operation was on Stuttgart. In an attempt to avoid contact with night fighters the 863 bombers that were dispatched split into two parts, flying a roundabout route over France nearly as far as the Swiss frontier before turning north-east to approach Stuttgart.44 This deception worked until just before the force reached the target when 93 1 JD crews were fed into the bomber stream.
Fifty kilometres southwest of Strasbourg Oberleutnant Heinz Rökker, Staffelkapitän, I./NJG2 peered out of the cockpit windscreen of his heavily armed Ju 88R-2 night fighter,45 scanning the sky for the sight of a Viermot, or four-engined heavy bomber. Rökker listened impatiently but attentively to the long litany of instructions from his Bordfunker crouched in the cockpit of their Junkers as they continued their night chase across the countryside to their designated Himmelbett Räume or ‘four poster bed box’ near Aschaffenburg. The clock was approaching 22.30 hours. Rökker, who had served in I./NJG2 for almost two years, had recently reached double figures in the victory tables and he was hungry for more. He had scored his first Abschuss in June 1942 in the Mediterranean when he had destroyed a Bristol Beaufort in daylight over the sea. This keen exponent of Fernnachtjagd intruder operations destroyed his first Viermot on 23/24 August 1943 when he shot down a Lancaster 20 kilometres southwest of Berlin for his seventh victory. Now he had another Viermot in his sights.
Rökker scurried into action, his Funker making sure that the FuG 217 Neptun R tail warning radar was clear. The last thing they wanted was a dreaded Moskito on their tail. Telefunken FuG 350 Naxos Z passive radar equipment, which some of the Ju 88R-1s and 2s carried and which homed onto H2S equipment, and Siemens FuG 227 Flensburg which homed onto the ‘Monica’ tail-warning device, might have identified Rökker’s victim. Or the plot could have come from the Jägerleitoffizier in his ‘Battle Opera House’ who would announce ‘Kuriere in sight’. Suddenly, in the earphones of Rökker’s Bordfunker was sounded the Jägerleitoffizier’s (JLO) announcement: ‘Have Kurier for you, Kirchturm 8 (8,000 metres), course 300°, Kurier flying from East to West.’
Rökker and his two crew reacted with excitement and enthusiasm. According to the information from the Jägerleitoffizier they were only a few kilometres behind a Dicke Auto (‘Fat Car’), which had been picked up on Würzburg ground radar, fixed on the plotting table and transmitted to the Oberleutnant and his crew stalking the bomber. It was a Lancaster. Rökker’s Bordfunker picked up contact on his Lichtenstein radar set and he transmitted Emil-Emil to alert his JLO. The Oberleutnant throttled back the two 1,700hp BMW 801D engines, approached stealthily from below and behind and then he opened fire. His guns recoiled. The Lancaster never stood a chance. Horrido! (‘Tallyho’) exclaimed Rökker over R/T to ground control to announce his first success of the night. Five minutes later the Jägerleitoffizier alerted Rökker’s Bordfunker that he had another Kuriere west of Hagenau. It was another Lancaster.
Pauke! Pauke! (‘Kettledrums! Kettledrums!’) Rökker announced. He was going into the attack.
‘1,000 metres, 800 metres, 500, 400, 300 metres!’ Power off and minimum speed in order not to overtake him, Rökker once again attacked von hinten unten. Small, bluish exhaust flames made it easier to keep the target in sight. Four engines, twin tail, were recorded almost subconsciously. No sudden movement that might attract the tail gunner’s attention. Calm now! Guns armed? Night sight switched on? Rökker could see that it was a Lancaster. He applied a little more power to the two BMW engines, approached cautiously and in the classic von hinten unten tactic, blew the bomber to pieces at about 100 metres’ range.
Cries of Horrido! filled the airwaves once again.
‘250, 200, 150 metres’. A slipstream shook the Junkers. They were close! At 100 metres Rökker pressed the gun button on the stick and the cannons rattled. He saw hits but the Lancaster did not catch fire. Backwell-Smith pushed the bomber into a nose-dive and then climbed before turning sharply to port losing height, as RAF pilots were trained to do in the aptly named corkscrew, a successful defensive tactic. In pursuit of him Rökker attacked the fuselage and hit the aircraft again but he could not see any flames. Flight Sergeant Eric Birrell the Australian rear gunner did not shoot back, so either he had been killed in the first attack or he or his hydraulics had been disabled and he could no longer turn the heavy guns. The mid-upper gunner gave defensive fire but it went wide. The WOp and the gunners were dead. Finally, Rökker lost sight of the enemy. It was the only time he failed to see his attack through to the end and confirm its success visually; therefore the kill was only provisionally awarded. The bomber had gone down though, and the navigator and bomb aimer did not survive their parachute jumps. Backwell-Smith and Sergeant N V Sirman the engineer landed safely and were taken prisoner.