Night Raid

by Taylor Downing

  There was still considerable opposition in the higher echelons of the army to the creation of a new elite force. They had far too much to do in preparing the nation’s defences to focus on developing a new arm of warfare. And senior officers believed, quite understandably, that if the best men of every army regiment were siphoned off to an elite unit then the army as a whole would be fatally weakened. But Churchill had fully understood the power and the effect that airborne troops could have. Seeing how the successful attack on the Belgian fort on the opening day of Hitler’s invasion of western Europe had so dispirited the Allied forces, he too wanted to start the long process of training a tough, hardened force that could provide the spearhead of future offensive actions and supply men for the daring one-off commando-type raids that he favoured. But at this moment of crisis, with the nation’s defences focused on preparations for an imminent invasion, it was a brave and far-sighted decision to create an entirely new military force.

  Two days after Churchill wrote his historic note, Major John Rock, a regular soldier in the Royal Engineers stationed in Scotland, was called urgently to the War Office in Whitehall and ordered to take charge immediately of the military side of organising an airborne force. Rock had truly been thrown in at the deep end. He knew nothing of aeroplanes, other than having flown in them as a passenger, and nothing whatsoever about parachutes or parachuting. He did not even know how many men were to be included in the first set of trainees. Utterly baffled by the seemingly impossible task his superiors had set him, he confided in his diary, ‘It was impossible to obtain information as to policy or task.’8 It was lucky that Rock proved to be a resourceful, courageous and determined pioneer. He was immediately sent north and told to report to an airfield near Manchester.

  At the same time as Churchill penned his famous memo, the army established a new training centre at the airport at Ringway, just outside Manchester, today’s Manchester airport. It was decided to base all parachute training here, but to disguise its purpose, the centre was named the Central Landing School. However, such a strange and confusing name soon became distorted and misunderstood. Rock once received a letter addressed to the ‘Central Laundry’ and an NCO based at Ringway received a letter addressed to the ‘Central Sunday School’.9

  Ringway had been chosen as the base for paratrooper training because it was well away from the dramas focused on reforming the remains of the British Army in the south of England. It was remote from other military bases, while about five miles south, across flat farming country, lay the estate and country seat of Lord Egerton of Tatton Park, near Knutsford in Cheshire. The noble lord agreed that his estate, consisting of a large area of open parkland, could be used for experimental parachute drops. Tatton Park thus became the first drop zone for the British Army. For the military it was just right, and as private land it was difficult for outsiders to penetrate and to see what strange activities the army was getting up to. It was an ideal location.

  When Major Rock arrived at Ringway, still dumbfounded by the bizarre mission he had been asked to fulfil, he was delighted to find Squadron Leader Louis Strange waiting for him. Strange was a First World War fighter ace with a string of impressive medals on his chest. The Air Ministry tasked him with organising the RAF side of the new parachute school. His mission was equally demanding. He had to investigate the technical issues associated with parachute jumping and how best to carry troops by glider. But, like the army, the RAF had absolutely no experience in this type of operation. Although parachutes were by now given to aircrew for use in emergencies, the problem of what aircraft were suitable for soldiers to jump from and what gliders could be built to carry men and their supplies was completely new. Despite the evidence of German advances in this sphere before the war, no work had been done in Britain.

  Indeed, the lack of suitable aircraft was to hold up the development of airborne forces for some time to come. In the summer of 1940, the RAF was totally occupied with supplying fighters to defend the skies of southern England in the Battle of Britain, and with providing bombers to bomb Germany and the invasion barges that were beginning to assemble in some of the Channel ports. There was no spare capacity with which to set up a new military force.

  As Rock and Strange got to work at Ringway, the memos flew back and forth in London. On 6 August, the Chiefs of Staff told the Prime Minister that five hundred men would be trained as parachute troops but that their training would be held up by the lack of suitable aircraft. The Prime Minister responded bluntly, ‘I said five thousand.’ The Air Ministry informed the PM that they simply could not find enough large aircraft to carry paratroopers and that they would have to deploy bombers for the task. But there were no bombers to spare and so they could only assign aircraft for training as a secondary role. They would try to obtain Dakota aircraft from America – the military version of the highly successful DC-3 civilian airliner built by the Douglas Corporation in California that had revolutionised civil aviation in the United States before the war. But this, of course, would take time. The Air Ministry suggested it would be better to prioritise the training of glider troops instead, as it might be easier and faster to design and build gliders than wait for suitable powered aircraft to be available.

  In September more memos were exchanged trying to define what the role of airborne troops should be. Military strategists still did not envisage that there would be enough paratroopers to provide the vanguard of any major offensive, and in any case, at this point Britain’s war effort was totally defensive. So the Air Ministry suggested that airborne forces could provide small raiding forces to land at key positions and then be evacuated by sea or by air. With this in mind, the RAF proposed that the proportion of glider troops to parachutists should be about six to one. The total airborne force proposed was 500 parachutists, with 2700 glider-borne troops and 360 pilots to fly them. This was a considerable reduction from Churchill’s demand for a force of 5000 men.

  Reluctantly, the Prime Minister agreed to this scaling down of his original plan. But still, the task of having a force of this size trained and ready by spring of 1941 horrified many officials who were struggling to cope with an avalanche of demands on limited supplies. Their frustration was clearly summed up by one senior officer in the RAF who wrote:

  There are very real difficulties in this parachute business. We are trying to do what we have never been able to do hitherto, namely to introduce a completely new arm into the Service at about five minutes’ notice, and with totally inadequate resources and personnel. Little, if any, practical experience is possessed in England of any of these problems and it will be necessary to cover in six months what the Germans had covered in six years.10

  No one asked why nothing had been done in all the years prior to this, when there had been ample warning of what the Germans were up to.

  Nevertheless, making the best of an almost impossible job, Squadron Leader Strange and Major Rock got on with their task of establishing the new military force. They were joined by Group Captain ‘Stiffy’ Harvey, who commanded the training school, and Captain Martin Lindsay, an Arctic explorer. They were given a single parachute and jumping helmet captured from the Germans and a limited supply of RAF silk parachutes. The aircraft selected to carry the parachutists over their target was the Armstrong Whitworth Whitley bomber, a slow moving, two-engined aircraft introduced in 1936 as the RAF’s first monoplane bomber. Its two Rolls-Royce Merlin engines were good in themselves and gave the Whitley a great roar as it took off, but they were not powerful enough for the aircraft to maintain height if one of the engines was put out of action. By the beginning of the war the Whitley was largely obsolete and was being replaced in Bomber Command by the Wellington. The problem with using the Whitley for airborne troops was that it had nowhere suitable for the paratroopers to jump from, so a hole was cut in the bottom of the fuselage where there would have been a ventral machine-gun turret. The parachutists would have to squeeze through and drop from this hole. It was very basic, but it would have to
do for now.

  Further design work was done on a range of gliders. It was decided to build them out of wood so furniture makers could manufacture them, thus avoiding extra pressure on the already strained war factories. A ten-seater, later called the ‘Hotspur’, was designed to be towed by a relatively small aircraft. A 25-seater, subsequently called the ‘Horsa’, was also designed and plans for larger gliders were laid down that could carry small vehicles. Again, the problem came back from the designers: what are these troops to be used for? As no one could in all faith answer this question yet, it was decided to build some prototypes to see how they performed and watch how the situation developed.

  The one aspect that seemed to offer encouragement was the recruitment of men for the new force. The War Office resolved at the outset that all airborne troops should be volunteers, a policy they maintained throughout the war. In the summer of 1940 all army units were asked to provide volunteers for a ‘special service unit’. Very little information was offered to those who came forward except that the work would involve taking part in ‘hazardous activities’. The selection committees did not tell those who volunteered that the unit would be a parachute force, but they looked for qualities of physical toughness, mental determination, and enthusiasm for ‘having a go’ at the enemy. They particularly wanted to recruit men who they thought could act and fight alone if necessary. No one knew if the volunteers who were accepted would have the courage and determination to jump out of an aircraft – and to continue repeatedly to do so.

  When the first group of volunteers arrived at Ringway in July 1940, they all wanted to know what sort of hazardous duties they had volunteered for. The men were lined up outside the new training school and Captain Cleasby-Thompson, one of the volunteer officers, carried out a roll call. ‘You are in No. 2 Commando,’ he told them. The word ‘commando’ was not in common parlance in the British Army of 1940. There was a pause. Then the officer continued, ‘You are all to be trained as parachutists.’ Another pause. ‘You are privileged to be the first men in the British Army to be asked to jump out of aircraft and reach the ground by the aid of parachutes. You should all feel very proud.’

  There was silence. None of the men moved a muscle. It was not clear whether this was due to a sense of resignation or of utter shock and horror. The captain went on, ‘I must warn you in the most serious manner that you are not to talk to anyone, either serviceman nor civilian, about the training.’ He concluded by saying ‘That is all’, turned and swiftly marched off.

  The stunned men remained where they were for a few seconds. Then one of their number exclaimed, ‘That is all. Well, it’s enough to be going on with, eh pals?’11

  A few days later the army instructors began to experiment by dropping dummies attached to parachutes from one of the first Whitley bombers provided by the RAF. They noted carefully where the dummies landed and began to formulate ideas about the optimum height and speed at which to jump. After several days of experimentation, the instructors themselves made their first jumps. From each jump they learnt something new. There were two ways to jump. The first method, through the rear of the aircraft, was called a ‘pull-off’. The parachutist somehow got himself into position standing with his back towards an opening where the rear gunner’s turret had been, facing towards the aircraft’s interior. The dispatcher then released the parachutist’s ripcord and the force of the parachute’s opening yanked the parachutist backwards and out of the aircraft. This must have been a terrifying experience.

  The second method, like the German technique, was to attach the parachute to a static line hooked to a steel cord that ran along the ceiling of the aircraft. The weight of a trooper jumping from the aircraft then automatically opened the parachute. First the rigging lines were deployed and then the silk canopy opened to a magnificent 28-foot diameter. As the ‘pull-off’ sometimes resulted in the parachutist blacking out in mid-air it was quickly decided to adopt the static line method. This became the standard form of jumping for the rest of the war.

  The volunteers watched all the experiments taking place. It was clear to them that while they were on the one hand pioneers, on the other they were no more than guinea pigs. As they were given the first instructions as to how to fall out of a bomber without injuring themselves, one man turned to another and expressed what no doubt they all felt. ‘A right lark this is,’ he said, ‘the blind leading the blind.’ It soon became the most repeated phrase among the brave young volunteers.12

  In order to qualify and to wear the much-prized silver paratrooper wings, the men had to make six jumps. Sliding through the hole cut into the floor of the Whitley was itself a difficult business. The first two men to jump had to sit with their legs dangling through the hole. The order ‘Action stations’ was the sign to prepare and make last-minute checks that the static line of your parachute was connected to the steel cord running along the ceiling of the aircraft. On the order ‘Go’ the first man would jump, trying hard to ensure that he did not push himself too far forward in which case he would smack his face into the side of the three-foot-deep tube that marked his exit route. If he leaned back too far, then his parachute would catch on the edge of the hole and again tip him forward with the likelihood of smashing his face into the narrow tube. These variants were nicknamed the ‘Whitley kiss’, or were known as ‘ringing the bell’. After the first two men had gone the rest of the squad had to shuffle forward on their bottoms through the dark and gloomy interior of the fuselage until they were over the hole and could jump. When well trained, all the men in an aircraft, known as a ‘stick’ of paratroopers, could get out in about ten seconds. If the aircraft was flying at 100 mph this meant that the ten troopers would be spread across about five hundred yards of ground below.

  After a little more than a hundred jumps had been made at Ringway, Driver Evans, who had been in the Motoring Corps, made a bad exit and got tangled in his rigging, becoming so twisted that his parachute failed to open. Evans plunged 800 feet to his death in full view of his comrades. It was the first parachutist fatality. Sadly, it would not be the last. This was not good for morale. All jumping was cancelled until improvements were made to the packing of the parachute pack. Only then did jumping resume.

  There was still a very long way to go before these first volunteers became anything like an effective military unit. But their existence was established, even if their fighting role was still vague. During the tough training that was to follow the men would be pushed to the limit of their physical and mental endurance. Many of them would drop out. Others would refuse to jump. They were told that there was no shame, but they would be quietly sent back to their units. About 15 per cent of volunteers refused to jump. Most got as far as the edge of the hole before refusing. The fear of the unknown, coupled with fear that the parachute would not open, was too strong. Others threw themselves out by sheer willpower in a state of near collapse. Even Wing Commander Strange noted that the inside of the Whitley was ‘dark and gloomy with its hole in the middle, and is bad for the nerves’. With typical RAF understatement he went on, ‘The sight of other men disappearing through the hole is an unpleasant one and the prospect of scraping one’s face on the side is not encouraging.’13 By September a little more than three hundred men had qualified. It was going to be a desperately slow process to bring the aircraft, the equipment and the men together into an effective fighting force.

  5

  Early Warning

  When war was declared on 3 September 1939, the radar system around Britain was still very rudimentary. The twenty stations of the Chain Home defensive shield were based along the east coast, where the threat from Germany was thought to be most real. This line of radar stations, from Ventnor on the Isle of Wight to Netherbutton in Orkney, was on air at least. The system was not yet totally reliable. Some of the reading of the radar information was still poor, height finding was not always accurate and very high or very low targets were likely to be missed altogether. But it was good enough to detect massed
formations of enemy aircraft as they crossed the Channel or the North Sea.

  The commander-in-chief of Fighter Command, Sir Hugh Dowding, who had done much to support the initial development of radar, was therefore sufficiently confident in the Chain Home radar system to rely on it for early warning of enemy attack. Consequently, he was content to do without standing fighter patrols. By conserving the resources of Fighter Command until there was a real threat from enemy bombers, as Colin Dobinson has put it, radar ‘began to win the Battle of Britain from the first minutes of the war’.1

  The main problem was that radar only worked over the sea. Once enemy aircraft crossed into the airspace above the countryside, the air defence system was reliant upon thousands of volunteers in the Observer Corps who would have to track aircraft movements and phone in their identifications. As Winston Churchill had pointed out before the war, this was like passing from ‘the 20th century to the early Stone Age’.2

  Meanwhile, the evacuation of the Bawdsey research team to Dundee University as war was declared had proved nothing short of a disaster. Although Watson-Watt had supposedly set up the move with the boss of his alma mater, when the dozens of research scientists and their equipment arrived in Dundee, nothing had been prepared for them. Valuable days and weeks were wasted getting the teams located, settled in and set up. Morale slumped and research came to a standstill. In October, Rowe’s senior officials told him in no uncertain terms that Dundee was an unsuitable site as it was too far from London, too far from RAF Fighter Command and too far from the main contractors commissioned to produce the radar kits. It didn’t help that it was also one of the wettest and coldest autumns on record.