Wings

by Patrick Bishop

  This exercise demonstrated that when sent against small targets (with strict instructions to avoid casualties among the civilians they were about to liberate) Bomber Command could now achieve a considerable degree of accuracy. The use of a Master Bomber to go in low and mark the objective became standard. One of the greatest practitioners was Leonard Cheshire, commander of 617 Squadron – the Dambusters – and ‘very learned in the art of bombing the enemy’.7

  In March 1944 Cheshire and Group Captain Monty Philpott, the station commander at Woodhall Spa in Lincolnshire where 617 was based, had prepared a paper on how the squadron’s bombing performance might be improved. It could already count on getting 60 per cent of the bombs it dropped within 100 yards of the target. Cheshire hoped to better that. At that stage, aircraft tasked with dropping markers arrived at the objective at the same time as the main force, which had to hang around in the flak-filled skies while Target Indicators (TIs) were dropped from heights of 5,000 to 8,000 feet. The memorandum argued that the target should already be marked before the bombers arrived. Also, to ensure precision, the marking should take place at the lowest possible level. To do so in a Lancaster was suicidal. Cheshire and Philpott proposed that smaller aircraft should be used, preferably a Mosquito, perhaps the finest of the great flock of aeroplanes that had taken flight from the inspired drawing board of Geoffrey de Havilland. The proposal was accepted by Ralph Cochrane, the commander of 5 Group to which 617 belonged, and two Mosquitoes were duly delivered.

  The new technique was called ‘Mossie marking’ and it was pioneered in a raid on Brunswick on 22 April 1944, with good results. The first time it was used in France, however, it resulted in a qualified disaster. The target was a panzer base near the village of Mailly in the Champagne-Ardennes region and the attack was due to go in just before midnight. The operation required expert marking and 617 Squadron, which by now had four trained Mosquito crews, was brought in. Cheshire led the team and the marking was good, so he called the main force to tell the bombers to begin their runs. By an appalling mischance, however, the controller’s VHF set was swamped with an American forces radio broadcast and he could not communicate the order. In the ensuing delay, the target had to be marked again. In the meantime German fighters appeared and shot down forty-two Lancasters, more than 11 per cent of the force. The raid was nonetheless a success. But there were misplaced accusations that Cheshire’s perfectionism had contributed to the debacle.

  Cheshire possessed an extraordinary serenity that enabled him to tarry with danger for protracted periods with apparent unconcern. He combined this quality with a charisma that touched everyone he came into contact with. ‘He was not shy. He was not reserved,’ remembered one of his men. ‘On the other hand he was not gushing, alarmist or boastful. He had no side. He was cool, calm, sympathetic. He was impressive. He was patient with us and he was kind . . . above all else to me, he was magnetic.’8

  617 Squadron would play a major part in the immediate post-operational air strikes to disrupt the German counter-attack, and on the V-weapons sites that menaced London and the South East. Their role on D-Day itself was psychological. They were tasked with executing Operation Taxable, which was part of the great deception strategy utilized in the run-up to the invasion to convince the Germans that the landings would be in the Pas de Calais. Research suggested that Window – the alumunium strips dropped on bombing raids to blind radar defences – could also mimic the presence of a mass of shipping. After dusk on 5 June 1944 the squadron took off from Woodhall and headed to a point off the Sussex coast to line up with a small dummy fleet. They then began flying back and forth towards the cliffs of Cap d’Antifer near Etretat along a fourteen-mile front, dropping Window all the while. When dawn came up at 4 a.m., their task was over. As they flew back for the last time they could see the skies to the south, full of aircraft and gliders heading for the Normandy beaches and below them, the real invasion fleet.

  The invasion of Normandy was the greatest amphibious operation in history, a one-off event that will never conceivably be repeated, and the role played by aeroplanes was of a matching magnitude. During the night 1,056 Lancasters, Halifaxes and Mosquitoes launched bombing raids on the coastal batteries with bombs, and when dawn came up the fighters, fighter-bombers and medium bombers of 2 TAF, and the heavies and mediums of the Eighth and Ninth US Army Air Forces joined the battle. The soldiers arrived by air as well as by sea. About 24,000 flew into action. The Americans of the 82nd and 101st Airborne divisions were carried there by fifty-six squadrons of transport aircraft. Most of the British arrived by Horsa glider, which could carry twenty-nine soldiers.

  The memory of the carpet of aircraft overhead that morning, their wings decorated with thick black-and-white stripes, stayed with those who saw it for the rest of their lives. John Keegan, the great military historian, was a small boy in the West Country when one evening ‘the sky over our house began to fill with the sound of aircraft, which swelled until it overflowed the darkness from edge to edge. Its first tremors had taken my parents into the garden, and as the roar grew I followed and stood between them to gaze awestruck at the constellation of red, green and yellow lights which rode across the heavens and streamed southward towards the sea. It seemed as if every aircraft in the world was in flight, as wave after wave followed without intermission, dimly discernible as dark corpuscles on the black plasma of the clouds, which the moon had not yet risen to illuminate. The element of noise in which they swam became solid, blocking our ears, entering our lungs and beating the ground beneath our feet with the relentless surge of an ocean swell. Long after the last had passed from view and the thunder of their passage had died into the silence of the night, restoring to our consciousness the familiar and timeless elements of our surroundings, elms, hedges, rooftops, clouds and stars, we remained transfixed and wordless on the spot where we stood, gripped by a wild surmise at what the power, majesty and menace of the great migratory flight could portend.’9

  Among the carpet of aircraft rolling overhead were gliders, packed with troops, being towed to the landing areas. Around them buzzed a bodyguard of fighters, protection against any Luftwaffe marauders. The pilots and aircrews included men for whom the coming liberation was the answer to their most fervent prayers. Jean Accart who had escaped from France in 1943, was flying with a Spitfire squadron to cover the landing. ‘0.4.30 hours . . . over the Channel,’ he recorded. ‘The twelve aircraft fly in three columns in close formation so as not to lose contact . . . against a gradually lightening sky, the fleeting shadows of the fighters become sharper as they sweep over their sector in stacked groups, crowding in between the water and the clouds. We make out the powerful silhouettes of the Thunderbolts which pass above us, dipping a little to check our identity, and of the suspicious Lightnings, which come in and sniff at our tails. It is a miracle that all these squadrons can manoeuvre in so small an area without colliding.’

  Turning back at the end of his patrol Accart saw ‘in the early morning mist and precisely at the appointed time and place columns of towing planes and gliders appear and move onwards in a procession more than forty-five miles long. As far as the eye can see the lines of heavy aircraft and huge gliders fly low over the Channel, covered by swarms of fighters weaving over them like watchful sheepdogs. The French coast appears and becomes clearer as the gliders pass over precisely on time amid the puffs of a few bursts of flak. One after the other the gliders cast off, spiral down and land lightly on their designated field, assembling with masterly skill on a pocket handkerchief. Above them the fighters provide an impenetrable defence – and impenetrable it is for the problem is to avoid collisions. Never before had we possessed such absolute domination of the skies.’10

  The picture painted by Accart was somewhat idealized. Many gliders were whisked off course by high winds or lost their way after jinking to avoid flak; troops were scattered far and wide and stores lost. The weather was against them, with a thick cloak of cloud overlaying the landing zones at 2,000 fe
et. But despite the conditions and the huge volume of missions, losses were mercifully low. Only 113 aircraft were shot down, most of them by flak, a rate of only 0.77 per cent.

  On that vital day the Luftwaffe defenders could only muster 319 sorties. Their presence over the beach head remained sparse. It was not until D plus 2 that Roland Beamont, now leading 150 Wing and flying the new Hawker Tempest, met the enemy. It is a measure of the state of the German air defences that it was the first time in two years of regular cross-Channel operational flying that he had done battle with a German fighter.

  They crossed the coast at Dieppe and the controller passed the welcome news that there were ‘bogeys in the vicinity of Lisieux’. A few minutes later he saw a smattering of black specks outlined against the cloud, two miles away and 6,000 feet below. With the skies so full of Allied aircraft it was vital to make a positive identification before going in to attack and Beamont dived down to investigate. As they grew closer to what he now saw were five fighters, weaving in line astern, he noted the thin fuselages and narrow, tapered wings. They were Messerschmitt 109s. The aeroplane’s superb basic design had, like the Spitfire, enabled it to undergo numerous mutations to keep it in service even at this late stage of the war. Beamont called on one of his two squadrons to cover him, while he took the other in on the attack.

  ‘Already he was rolling over into a steep dive to cut off the Messerschmitts, which were sliding directly over the Tempests on the port side,’ wrote Beamont’s biographer. ‘He glanced quickly over his shoulder for the reassuring, companionable sight of the rest of 3 Squadron slanting down the sky with him. The sun was right behind. It was the perfect “bounce”.’11

  Eight hundred yards behind and still overtaking, he switched on the illuminated gunsight and the camera gun. ‘Black crosses were growing plainly visible on the target. How long can this last? he wondered. How unsuspecting can they be! He selected his target . . . he had to get this Hun.’

  At last the Germans realized the peril they were in. ‘Black smoke spurts from their exhaust as they ram open wide their throttles, and reverse violently across the path of the Tempests in a scurry for the cloud tops.’ It was too late. ‘Beamont rudders his gunsight on to the last aircraft in the formation. Bead slightly above the cockpit. Halfway along the wing for fifteen-degree angle deflection. Now! His thumb tightens and the Tempest shudders with the recoil of the cannon. Hell! He’ll never forgive himself. He has missed.’ But in his desperation to get away, the 109 pilot twisted back under Beamont’s guns. ‘This time there is no mistake. The range is less than two hundred yards . . . dusty puffs of shell bursts rise from the 109’s tail, fuselage and cockpit, and the sight of them stokes a concentrated desire, an overwhelming compulsion to destroy. The climax of the hunt is hot in his blood.’

  Then Beamont’s windscreen filled with smoke and he pulled up sharply to avoid collision. He rolled the Tempest over and looked down to see the Messerschmitt ‘still on the same heading, but with yellow flames streaming from the cockpit to the tail. For a few seconds he watches, fascinated. Slowly the port wing crumples and folds back, and the 109 drops vertically, trailing thick oily smoke, jet black against the whiteness of the cloud.’ A few seconds later Beamont was hit himself, but managed to return to base in one piece. A few months later he was shot down and taken prisoner, proof that the Luftwaffe, although utterly dominated, showed the same manic doggedness as their comrades on the ground.

  In the main, however, in the Normandy campaign, the fighter pilots would wreak havoc with abandon. Beamont may not have written the purple words above, but the prose is authorized and it reflects the joy Allied airmen felt at leading the charge to what now seemed inevitable victory. Lightnings, Mustangs, Tempests, Typhoons, Thunderbolts and Spitfires roamed the skies, arriving at any time, and literally out of the blue, to bomb and blast, generating a fog of dread that hung over every German soldier, so that no one paused for a smoke or to empty their bowels without having one ear cocked for the menacing note of a Packard or Napier or Merlin engine and an eye trained for the rapidly growing speck in the sky.

  The mayhem they caused is recorded in the cine-gun film. Even in grainy black and white you can sense the surge of rockets as they power away from under the wings of the Typhoons, either singly or in devastating salvos, trailing ribbons of white smoke as they race towards earth to explode in the targets hidden in the fields, orchards, lanes and hedgerows of bucolic, summer Normandy.

  No one was safe, not even the German commander Erwin Rommel. At 6 p.m. on 17 July, after a day-long tour of the Front, he was heading for the Army Group B headquarters. Allied aircraft had just been busy and the road was piled up with wrecked vehicles. His driver turned off on a side road but, according to his aide Captain Helmuth Lang, as they approached Livarot, ‘suddenly Sergeant Holke our spotter, warned us that two aircraft were flying along the road in our direction. The driver, Daniel, was told to put on speed and turn off on a little side road to the right, about a hundred yards ahead of us, which would give us some shelter. Before we could reach it, the enemy aircraft, flying at great speed only a few feet above the road, came up to within 500 yards of us and the first one opened fire.

  ‘Marshal Rommel was looking back at this moment. The left-hand side of the car was hit by the first burst. A cannon shell shattered Daniel’s left shoulder and left arm. Marshal Rommel was wounded in the face by broken glass and received a blow on the left temple and cheekbone, which caused a triple fracture of the skull and made him lose consciousness immediately.’ The driver lost control and the car hit a tree stump and turned over. The unconscious Rommel was thrown out. As he lay ‘stretched out in the road’ about twenty yards from the car, a ‘second aircraft flew over and tried to drop bombs on those who were lying on the ground’.12 Rommel survived, only to be made to commit suicide in October 1944 for his connection with the 20 July Plot to assassinate Hitler. Such was the plethora of Allied air activity in the area that three pilots from three separate squadrons were later to claim the credit for having dished the Desert Fox.

  Bomber Command threw its thunderbolts into the cosmic chaos. Its size, power and efficiency now made its gallant but puny efforts at the start of the conflict a distant memory. On the night of 8–9 June, 617 Squadron went to work with a new weapon. It was the 12,000 lb ‘Tallboy’ bomb, another product of the mind of the inventor Barnes Wallis. The Tallboy was made of strong, light molybdenum steel, twenty-one-feet long, tapering to a point that was as sharp as a pencil and fitted comfortably into the bomb bay of a Lancaster. Wallis had given his bomb a perfect aerodynamic shape and arranged the fins so that they would impart an increasingly rapid spin. As Tallboy passed through the speed of sound it attained a velocity that drove it a hundred feet into the earth. Wallis had established that shock waves rippled more powerfully through earth and water than they do through air. Thus, the bomb did not have to score a direct hit to destroy a target.

  The objective that night was the main railway line running from the south-west – where German units were held in reserve, including the soon-to-be-notorious Das Reich division – and Normandy. The aim was to bring down a bridge and collapse a long tunnel in the area of Saumur on the Loire to block the flow of reinforcements. Four Lancasters from 83 Squadron were to drop flares and deal with the bridge. The tunnel was reserved for 617. The target was marked by Leonard Cheshire, Dave Shannon, an Australian veteran of the Dams Raid, and Gerry Fawke in Mosquitoes. Nineteen Tallboys were dropped, collapsing not just the tunnel but the whole hillside above it.

  Four days later Hitler ordered the first of his ‘revenge weapons’, the V-1 flying bombs or ‘doodlebugs’, to be despatched to fall randomly on London and the South East. It was a measure of desperation. The assault was unexpected and had a particularly demoralizing effect on a population who were starting to believe the war was nearly over. Great effort went into dealing with the V-1. For the next two months, half of Bomber Command’s operations went into trying to neutralize the rocket la
unching sites, until the Allied ground advance eventually swept over them. The sites were well-hidden, buried under thick layers of concrete and heavily protected, and about 3,000 Allied airmen would die in the campaign to destroy them.

  In that time the Germans managed to fire 2,579 V-1s at England, half of which fell in the London area. Fighter squadrons were on guard over the approaches to London and managed to shoot down a total of 1,771. The Tempests proved to be particularly adept executioners, accounting for 638.

  In the great effort to break out of the landing zone, air power could change the course of a major battle. On 7 August 1944 the German counter-attack at Mortain in the Falaise pocket was stopped by Typhoons dropping bombs, and, above all, firing rockets which delivered the same punch, it was said, as a broadside from a destroyer.