The action had descended to 1,000 feet altitude where it became obvious to both sides that the bomber could not escape its fate. The enemy pilot turned on all his navigation lights and banked towards where the coast should be. Henry Bodien was not about to let the matter rest and now at 800 feet altitude, bored in for another pass. This was his last opportunity because, when they circled back, the Heinkel was next observed burning slightly, as the Defiant’s crew described it “in the sea”, almost certainly off the north Norfolk coast. In all Bodien estimated they had made no less than thirty to forty firing passes on the Heinkel and Sgt Wrampling had managed to fire 850 rounds, of which 600 were through his one fully serviceable gun. It had been a tough nut to crack with this handicap but as the combat intelligence report said, “The attack was carried out with great determination”, and with this great team effort they had gone in close and made every round count. Out of Wittering R/T range by now, Bodien got a homing from Digby where he landed at 01.17 to refuel and give Wrampling an opportunity to examine his faulty weapons, before landing back at Wittering at 03.15.
That night a German pilot had belly-landed an aeroplane near Sharrington, a small village between Holt and Fakenham in north Norfolk, just four miles inland from the coast at Blakeney Point. It was subsequently established that this Heinkel was He111H-4, A1+LL of I/KG53, wk nr 3235, flown by Leutnant Alfred von Bachfelden who, having bombed Liverpool, was returning to his base in northern France. Could the flicker of flames mentioned by Bodien have been this crew setting fire to their aircraft, as it was was pretty well burned out by the time the German airmen were rounded up as prisoners-of-war? Of the other crewmen, Gefr B Reynat and Uffz W Richter were made POW, but Gefr B Kauhardt died in the engagement. Although A1+LL is generally credited to Plt Off Bodien and Wrampling, in a subsequent chapter it will be seen that all may not be quite what it seems about this night’s work.
Mid May 1941 saw the culmination of the Luftwaffe Blitz and some of 151’s Hurricanes continued to be detached to other sectors – this month for example to RAF Coltishall in Norfolk. Meanwhile the pace of night action was hotting up as – unbeknown of course at this point – the Luftwaffe Blitz moved towards its peak. On the night of May 7/8 bombers attacked Liverpool and Hull and Plt Off Richard Stevens, one of more than 300 RAF fighters sent up in the overnight period, notched up two more He111s out of the thirteen E/A claimed that night.
Airborne from Wittering at 01.12 on the 8th for a freelance patrol, he was at first drawn towards Grantham by AA fire. Searchlights lit up a Heinkel but Stevens could not make up the altitude deficit before the bandit disappeared. Now flying at 10,000 feet he could see fires in the direction of Hull and radioed for permission to fly into that sector to investigate. Group gave the ‘OK’ and off he went. Over the city at just after 02.00, in the light of the half moon he saw a Heinkel about 2,000 feet below and swooped down on its rear quarter. He fired two bursts, the second of which hit the starboard engine, bringing a stream of oil and glycol back over the Hurricane. Stevens calmly cleaned the windscreen and went back into the attack. Making violent S-turns, the bomber tried to evade the Hurricane but Stevens fired another telling burst that caused the bomber to go into a slow rolling dive and be lost to his view in some low level cloud. Five minutes later, while climbing back up to resume his search, Richard Stevens saw another Heinkel flying eastwards, possibly one of those on its way home from Liverpool. He banged open the throttle and caught up with it but the crew was more alert than most and it dived towards the cloud cover. Firing from 250 yards – pretty far out for Stevens – as the range closed his first burst hit the port engine, which exploded in sparks and shed large parts of cowling. Following the bomber in its dive, Stevens put in a final burst and more pieces flew off before it, too, was enveloped by cloud. Climbing back up once more he continued looking for the enemy but could find none so, when the fuel in his main tanks was exhausted he returned to Wittering, landing at 03.35 with another job well done. It is believed Heinkel He111, 5J+ZB from Stab I/KG4 and G1+GH of I/KG55 are those brought down by Plt Off Stevens.
Under a full moon, London on the 10/11th became the cauldron for the Luftwaffe’s last maximum-effort raid of the Blitz. With other squadrons from the sector and other crews from 151 Squadron, Sgt Percy Copeland and Flt Lt Des McMullen in Defiants and Plt Offs Richard Stevens and Irving Smith in Hurricanes were again in combat, this time over the Thames as part of the RAF’s maximum-effort Fighter Night response. Moonlight gave good visibility to both sides and over 500 enemy bombers attacking the capital were met by swarms of single-engine fighters. Fighter Command records indicate over 300 fighters were deployed throughout the night and many aircraft – on both sides – flew more than one sortie.
Inevitably, among the latter was Plt Off Stevens, who claimed one bomber shot down (possibly He111, 1T+HH of KG28) and one probable, in the vicinity of the capital. Having had no luck on his first sortie of the night he had hung about the capital for so long that he had insufficient petrol to make it back to Wittering and just managed to find refuge at RAF Fowlmere, Duxford’s satellite airfield. Re-fuelled, at 03.11 hours on the 11th he took his Hurricane back over the fires raging in the north-east of the city. Seeing AA fire to the west he set off towards it and found a Heinkel He111. In amongst the AA barrage, Stevens set about the Heinkel, his machine-gun fire causing an explosion in the fuselage, the engines streaming white smoke as it dived away into dense smoke from fires below. In an understatement Stevens thought “it inadvisable to follow” so he climbed over north London to resume his patrol. AA gunfire had a go at his Hurricane but diving out of danger he saw another Heinkel in front and above him at 7,000 feet. Its ventral gunner was awake and fired at the Hurricane as it approached. Plt Off Stevens gave the bomber a burst from 100 yards but as he broke left the dorsal gunner got in his own burst, peppering the underside of the Hurricane and damaging the engine, wings and a wheel. Bringing the Hurricane in faster this time, Stevens tried to get beneath the bomber but its wily pilot slowed down and the fighter almost overshot. Throttling back quickly, Stevens put a burst into the fuselage centre section but stalled and the Heinkel dived towards some cloud cover. As it passed him in the dive Stevens fired into the centre section again and the bomber seemed to go out of control. With his engine running roughly, he managed to make it back to Wittering intact to claim one destroyed and one probable. Strictly speaking these two particular Heinkels are unconfirmed, although several Heinkels are listed by the Luftwaffe as failing to return from ops or were severely damaged when they got back. Furthermore in the mêlée of aircraft over the capital that night it is quite possible that more than one fighter attacked the same bomber.
Sgt Copeland and his New Zealand air gunner Sgt R Sampson left Wittering at 01.50 on a Fighter Night over Gravesend. Bombers were attacking the docks and it was around 03.00, against the smoke and flames from this, when Copeland spotted a Heinkel flying east. Despite the target taking violent evasion Copeland kept the Defiant in the classic attacking position beneath the starboard wing, allowing Sampson to rake the whole of the fuselage with four bursts of gunfire. The Heinkel gunners fired back but the Defiant’s position made it impossible for them to reach their target and after the second burst, return fire ceased. With one engine stopped the bomber slowly turned over and dived earthwards. Sgt Sampson hit it with two more bursts and riddled by 1,000 de Wilde and armour piercing rounds, the Heinkel exploded on the ground somewhere near Gravesend. Heinkel He111, A1+CL of I/KG53, was later found to have crashed not far away, near Gillingham.
Then, at 03.30, Desmond McMullen and air gunner Sgt Fairweather, on their second (freelance) sortie of the night, headed towards the fires that could be seen from Wittering itself. At 03.15 over the West End, Fairweather saw a Heinkel He111 heading south at a rapid rate of knots and McMullen, ‘pulling the plug’, overhauled it quickly. In another classic Defiant interception they came in under the port wing of the bomber, from where Sgt Fairweather put four long bursts into i
t at seventy-five yards range. Both engines and the fuselage caught fire and down went the Heinkel into a field about five miles from Tunbridge Wells. Their victim is believed to be Heinkel He111, G1+BT of KG55 that crashed at Withyham (East Sussex).
At 03.45 Plt Off Irving Smith, in one of the last Fighter Night combats of that frenetic night, claimed a Heinkel He111 as damaged in an engagement that was fought out all the way from the East End of London to Southend. Smith got in three bursts at the bomber while managing to avoid being hit by return fire. The Heinkel dived from 11,000 feet down to 1,500 feet at which point a Bofors light AA gun opened up on the Hurricane and Smith had to break off the combat. He landed at Wittering at 04.45 hours.
Following the fortunes of 151 Squadron’s Hurricanes and Defiants on such a night illustrates graphically just how far and wide these fighters roamed. Many night squadrons and day squadrons were equally heavily engaged of course – 1 Squadron for example claiming no less than eight E/A destroyed that night. The battle raging was of a scale not seen since the daylight battles of the previous summer, with the defenders claiming twenty-four E/A destroyed – later found to be half that number in reality with fifteen damaged. Nevertheless, it was a ‘hot’ night and while all this was going on down south, RAF Wittering itself came in for some punishment when the Luftwaffe bombed it for the fourth night in a row. Plt Off Gayzler with air gunner Plt Off Pfleger, in N3372, one of the crews left minding the shop, intercepted what they thought was a Messerschmitt Bf110 over Peterborough around 23.59 on the 10th, but their Defiant was too slow to catch up with it and the E/A got away.
Gradually, from June onwards, it became clear that the Luftwaffe had substantially scaled down its activity over the UK, not only due to the short summer nights but also because of the start of the Russian campaign. On the night of 13/14 though, with one of the squadron’s new four-cannon Hurricane IIs in his capable hands, Plt Off Richard Stevens continued to build up his score by shooting down a Heinkel He111 that crashed south of Royston. The hitting power of the four 20mm cannon in a pair of steady hands is amply demonstrated by Stevens’ report: “A burst of one second from 250-300 yards dead astern caused a tremendous explosion in E/A, audible above the noise of the engine and the Hurricane was thrown violently upward and turned on its back.” He had fired just forty rounds.
The arrival of the Turbinlite Havoc onto the night fighter scene – of which more later – marked another change of role for 151 when they sent a number of Hurricanes on detachment to RAF Hunsdon for Turbinlite cooperation training. Back at Wittering in August the whole of that month and the next were devoted to day and night training sorties with the Searchlight Havocs of 1453 Flight. The first pukka Turbinlite patrol by 151 Squadron was launched on October 22/23 1941 with Z2361, one of four Hurricane II cannon-armed aircraft now on charge and Defiant AA431. Both were in the hands of experienced night flyers with the Hurricane flown by Plt Off Richard Stevens and Plt Off Alex McRitchie at the controls of the Defiant. During the one-hour patrol, Stevens became separated from the formation but claimed to have destroyed an enemy aircraft he had spotted. The story of that interception is detailed in Chapter 5.
The squadron was still mounting Fighter Nights from Wittering and also by using a detachment at RAF Coltishall. September was a lean month, though, with the best opportunity coming the way of Defiant crew Plt Off John Haviland and his air gunner, Sgt R G Stolz-Page. John Haviland was actually American by birth but had spent most of his early life in England. While at Nottingham University he joined the RAFVR and was called up on the outbreak of war. His first posting, to 1 School of Army Cooperation was not to his liking so, at the height of the Battle of Britain, when pilots were being trawled from all sorts of units, he volunteered for Fighter Command. Trained at 6 OTU, RAF Sutton Bridge, on Hurricanes, he was posted to 151 Squadron in late September 1940.
This pair was scrambled from Wittering at 01.43 on September 12 to intercept an incoming raider. Langtoft GCI directed the pilot to the general vicinity of the bandit and searchlights beckoned him even closer until at 02.25 Haviland got a visual near Luffenham, to the west of Wittering. There in the half-moonlight was a Dornier Do215 heading south-west, cruising along at 4,000 feet altitude, silhouetted just above the cloud tops. Haviland, a couple of thousand feet higher, had no trouble picking out his quarry in the good visibility and immediately dived at the port side of the Dornier, giving his gunner the chance of a quick squirt as the Defiant zoomed underneath. Pulling up and round to his left, Haviland now came at the bomber from head on below, this time allowing Stolz-Page a four-second burst at a hundred yards range. Turning to port, the fleeing Dornier was quickly lost in cloud and although Stolz-Page was confident many of his 400 armour piercing (AP) and de Wilde rounds would have hit the enemy he did not actually see any strikes on the bomber. Plt Off Haviland scoured the area but no further contact was made. Later it was reported that the local Observer Corps heard a bomber circle once before flying off at high speed, estimated at 340mph, towards the east. Haviland landed back at Wittering at 03.00.
It might be appropriate at this point to provide some detail about the ammunition called ‘de Wilde’ that has been mentioned in this narrative from time to time. This was the name given to incendiary bullets used by the RAF and should not be confused with ‘tracer’ rounds. Tracer rounds tended to take a lower trajectory so did not mark the path of other rounds entirely accurately. Generally speaking, the guns of an RAF night fighter were not loaded with tracer so that, when they were fired, its position would not be compromised. On striking a target de Wilde incendiaries could cause any flammable material or liquid to ignite or explode. Additionally, the flash of light produced when the chemical compound in the tip of these rounds struck would show the gunner that he was hitting the target. This particular incendiary bullet was developed at Woolwich Arsenal and issued just in time for use in the Battle of Britain. It was named ‘de Wilde’ to deceive the Germans that it was derived from ammunition designed by a Swiss gentleman of that name. The British, however, had discovered that de Wilde’s original design could only be produced by hand – an impractical proposition – whereas the British ‘de Wilde’ bullets were the invention of a soldier, Captain Aubrey Dixon, whose design, crucially, could be mass-produced.
One night in October Plt Off Alex McRitchie and his air gunner Plt Off Sampson in Defiant AA417 intercepted no less than four Junkers Ju88s twenty-five miles off Great Yarmouth, claiming one destroyed and one damaged. Trade was a bit thin by this time though and McRitchie had to wait nearly a month before he was again in action at dusk on November 15 in Defiant AA408 and could claim another Ju88.
Cooperation with the Turbinlite flight was back on 151’s menu at Wittering in December and this even included experimenting with the Havocs, dropping parachute flares on possible targets from altitudes of 5,000 feet. However, that idea was soon scrapped as a complete waste of time.
By the end of 1941 there were nine squadrons of Beaufighters, six squadrons of Defiants – including 151 Squadron – and ten flights of Turbinlite Havocs, operating in the home defence night fighter role throughout the UK. Even better news though, was in the offing for the squadron when it was announced that 151 was to convert to the new Mosquito night fighter. Although this was an enormous boost for the squadron’s morale, life went on as usual at Wittering because officialdom still persisted with the ‘in-between’ Turbinlite concept. The squadron’s A Flight received its first Mosquito NF II on April 6 1942 but B Flight had to soldier on with its Defiants for a while. How they fared with the Mosquito while they remained at RAF Wittering will be dealt with later in this story.
CHAPTER 4
Patrolling the Blue Lines
Moving from RAF Debden to RAF Digby on June 27 1940 to replace 229 Squadron, 29 Squadron began its contribution to the defence of sectors around The Wash equipped with a complement of Bristol Blenheim Mk I fighters. A few weeks later, with the squadron now operating from Digby’s satellite airfield at Wellingore
, also known at this time as L1, the energetic Sqn Ldr Charles Widdows took command and Wellingore Hall, a large mansion in the village, was commandeered as the officers’ mess. The Hall was only a mile from L1 dispersal and since non-commissioned aircrew were also found accommodation in the village, this arrangement enabled pilots and gunners to meet a thirty-minute availability commitment and get more sleep by avoiding the need to travel to and from Digby airfield itself.
Operational night patrols along various pre-determined compass bearings radiating from the airfield began immediately, interspersed with airborne practice flights to get used to the new AI equipment, usually referred to at this stage as RDF trials. The enemy was rarely found but on the night of June 30/July 1 the squadron received a rude awakening when Blenheim L1374 flown by nineteen-year-old Plt Off Peter Sisman with his air gunner, twenty-year-old Sgt Andrew Reed, crashed near Wellingore airfield while trying to engage an enemy bomber. Their patrol began at 22.50 and was uneventful until just after midnight when Plt Off Sisman reported his recognition lights had gone u/s and he was ordered to return to base. Approaching the airfield he told Digby Ops that he had spotted a bandit and was off to investigate. The term ‘bandit’, as used either by ground control or aircrew, meant that the target was almost certainly an enemy aircraft but positive identification was still essential.
He then reported that he could not keep the bandit in sight because his aircraft was coned by searchlights and these were dazzling him. So, with no recognition lights to use, ops recalled Sisman and gave him a course to steer for base. Shortly afterwards people on the airfield heard the sound of a crash and the explosion of bombs lit up the sky. L1374 had gone down, believed to be due to loss of control while held in searchlight beams and when the Blenheim caught fire, an enemy aircraft had laid a stick of bombs across the wreckage, blowing it and its crew to pieces with a direct hit.
No Place for Chivalry Page 9
