Lancaster Men

by Peter Rees

  The final training exercise on the Wellington was a six-hour flight over occupied France to drop propaganda leaflets on the city of Tours. It was known as a ‘nickel’ raid and was not classed as an operation. ‘They obviously picked areas where they knew that there weren’t many German fighters or defences,’ Rollow said, ‘but a few guns fired at us as we went over the coast.’ Flak left the radio and rear gun turret unserviceable. ‘But if you didn’t get back you’d failed,’ he added dryly.

  It was on the ground at Lichfield, that he experienced ‘cold, gut-wrenching fear’ for the first time. As he returned to the station by bicycle from the pub late one night, an old Whitley bomber came in low overhead. One engine had evidently stopped, and the plane plunged into trees about 100 metres from the road. Petrol began leaking from the fuel tank onto a hot exhaust pipe, evaporating with a loud hiss. In the darkness, Rollo could not tell whether there were injured crew still inside the twisted wreck.

  As it was likely to burst into flames at any moment I could not go away and leave them—if there was anyone—so I crawled into the aircraft through the rear door. It was a tight fit inside with jagged metal everywhere and I could only crawl forward slowly. Not until I got to the cockpit was I sure there was no one there. They had scampered off before I reached the wreckage. I slowly worked my way backwards to the door and the noise of the petrol on the hot exhaust seemed to get louder. Then I realised that if the aircraft burned there would be nothing left of me. I was alone. No one knew where I was. It was the thought of dying alone that terrified me. [My wife] Grace would never know what happened. The Whitley did not burn. It was still there next day and I told no one of my stupidity the night before.

  Yet if someone had still been inside the plane, Rollo might have been awarded a medal for gallantry.

  After Lichfield, Rollo and the crew spent a month at Swinderby in Lincolnshire retraining for the Lancaster bomber. There, they added a mid-upper gunner, a quiet Welshman named Dai Rees, and a flight engineer, ‘Junior’ Fairburn. They quickly got the hang of the Lancaster. A lot of training time was spent on learning how to corkscrew during combat, a tactic Rollo thought overrated. He believed it disorientated the gunners and made the navigator’s task more difficult. An aircraft corkscrewing also lost one or two thousand feet of altitude at a time when it paid to be as high as possible.

  Although Rollo was an experienced pilot, when it came to bombing operations he was, as he admitted, ‘a complete sprog. The whole thing was new to me and there were young flying officers and flight sergeant pilots who’d had more experience in Bomber Command than me, so it would not have been fair to me or my crew to have gone off on a trip without some experience.’

  To overcome this, he did two trips as a passenger. On the first, to Kassel, he saw what a defended German city was like, and was terrified. ‘It was a clear night and we could see the searchlights, the intense flak, the photo flash flares and the explosions on the ground, and the exploding bombers a long way away as we flew toward the target in clear sky. It was a cauldron of hell, magnificent, awesome, and we had to fly into and through it. It scared all the self-confidence out of me. I remembered how to pray.’

  Rollo was lucky. On that raid, 467 Squadron lost one Lancaster. Four of its seven-man crew were killed and the other three taken prisoner. For Rollo, such losses would become all too familiar.

  7

  CRIPPLED OVER ESSEN

  Peter Isaacson knew there was nothing pleasant about ‘Happy Valley’, as the men of Bomber Command called the Ruhr valley, hub of Germany’s heavy industries. Massive concentrations of searchlights, anti-aircraft batteries and fighter aircraft guarded the valley and its steel, armaments, coke and synthetic oil plants, greatly reducing the chances of a safe return. But on the night of 4 January 1943, this was where Isaacson and his Lancaster crew were headed. Their target was Essen and the Krupp ironworks.

  Having dropped the bomb load from 20,000 feet, Peter had a compass malfunction that caused him to keep circling the target. After he had checked with the magnetic compass, navigator Bob Nielsen got a couple of astro-navigation fixes with his sextant that put them about fifty kilometres east of Essen instead of west. This meant they had to go back over the city. Flak was bursting everywhere, but luckily it did no damage to the Lancaster. Then bomb aimer Ed Wertzler saw a JU-88 fighter and shouted a warning. ‘Fighter below, a little to starboard,’ he yelled. Peter wrote home later:

  I immediately dived and turned starboard but not before the b--- had fired. The bullets entered the bomb bay and fuselage causing a fair bit of damage. Luckily, Ed, on seeing the Jerry, had hopped into his turret, otherwise he wouldn’t be alive today, for some of the bullets pierced the bomb aimer’s compartment. As it was, he got three pieces of shrapnel in the leg. This was the only burst the fighter managed to get in, ’cos all three gunners fired and I took evasive action. We had lost about 13,000 feet in about five secs. A fire had started in the bomb bay which Ed, with the help of others, managed to put out. Although Ed had been wounded, he said nothing about it ’til the fire was subdued and we were on our way again. While using the fire extinguisher, he got a bit of acid in his eye, and it is this, and not his leg, which is the worry.

  After the fight, all the compasses went haywire, which made the trip back even hairier. With the rudder trim damaged, the Lancaster was also difficult to control. With England in sight, an SOS went out and Peter put down at the first available aerodrome. Ed Wertzler was immediately taken to hospital. The extent of the damage surprised Peter: ‘When we saw the kite in the morning, we were amazed at the extent of the damage. We’d been raked from nose to stern with cannon and .303 fire, some of the holes being more than a foot square. The largest was 2 feet 6 inches wide by one foot long. Still we got back safely, which is all that matters.’

  Peter was approaching completion of his first tour of thirty operations. This meant that he and his crew could look forward to a long break before returning to action. Just before he reached the mark, he was invited to join Pathfinder Force. He felt it was an honour to be asked, and decided he would leave 460 Squadron RAAF for 156 Squadron RAF.

  Peter told his family: ‘Pathfinder Force does a special job for Bomber Command and to be asked to join it, as we were, is considered quite a feather in our cap. We have to volunteer to do at least 45 ops, including the ones already completed. This counts as two full tours instead of only one and a half as it would in an ordinary squadron.’ He decided to try to get an all-Australian crew together, as there wasn’t one in Pathfinder Force at the time. The majority of his crew went with him, and he added flight engineer, Flying Officer Don Delaney, from Sydney, at thirty-four the eldest of the crew, and bomb aimer Alan Ritchie, a twenty-nine-year-old pilot officer, also from Sydney.

  Peter and his crew made their first Pathfinder raid, against Hamburg, on the night of 30 January 1943. Accompanying them was a pigeon: Pathfinder crews each took a bird on flights over occupied Europe, Germany and Italy. ‘The theory was that if we came down over sea we could scribble our position in the dinghy, release the bird who would fly home, advising the Sea and Rescue team where we were . . . If all went well, [they] would find us, winch us to safety,’ Peter recalled. ‘I never found out how many crews were rescued in the manner described. I fear, not many!’

  In his log book Peter noted that the flight to Hamburg was ‘bloody cold’ and that the flak was moderately heavy. At the instant the aircraft’s bombs detonated, they took the all-important photograph showing how close to the target they had hit. All Pathfinder crews taking part in the raids used to put a shilling each into a pool. The crew whose bombs and flares were closest to the aiming point collected the kitty. Peter’s crew scooped the prize pool seven times in a row.

  Cologne followed three nights after Hamburg, on 2 February. Sixteen of 263 aircraft were lost on an ineffective raid. A sortie to Turin two nights later caused severe and widespread damage. A week later, the Isaacson crew headed to Wilhelmshaven, in a raiding pa
rty of 177 aircraft. The area was completely covered by cloud, but the Pathfinders were able to drop their parachute marker flares accurately using the new terrain-scanning radar system, H2S. The naval ammunition depot blew up with a huge explosion, but just as Peter was starting his bombing run, the port inner engine failed. Dropping his bomb load, he was forced to fly 600 kilometres on three engines.

  On the night of 14 February, the Isaacson crew joined an attack on Milan that took the total weight of bombs dropped by Bomber Command to 100,000 tons. Four days later, Air Commodore Don Bennett wrote to Peter saying he was now entitled to wear the coveted Pathfinder golden eagle badge on his left breast pocket. However, he noted, ‘You will not be entitled to wear the badge after leaving the [Pathfinder] force without a further written authority from me entitling you to do so.’

  Shortly after the Milan raid, RAAF headquarters in London phoned Peter with the news that he and his crew had been chosen to fly a Lancaster to Australia for a war bonds tour. His tally of raids stood at thirty-five, six of them with the Pathfinders. This was well short of the Pathfinders’ full requirement of forty-five. Don Bennett told Peter that if he went on the tour he would go in disgrace—and without his golden eagle badge. In any case, Bennett would not release him from operations.

  Peter and his crew flew again on 21 February, when the Pathfinders led 143 bombers to attack Bremen. No aircraft were lost, but Peter’s Lancaster, ‘Q for Queenie’, got a large hole in the fuselage. Back in England, his next stop was where King George presented him with the DFM, for his courage on previous operations. Peter and his crew celebrated with a group of office girls from Australia House. They went to see The Dancing Years, starring Ivor Novello. Made aware of the presence of Peter and his crew, Novello announced after the curtain calls that there would be a matinee on 5 March and all takings would go to the RAF Benevolent Fund. He then pointed to their box in the dress circle and, with a spotlight picking them out, said: ‘If it wasn’t for boys like those up there, the show wouldn’t be playing at all.’

  Celebrations over, on 25 February Peter and his crew took part in an attack by 337 aircraft on Nuremberg that left more than 300 buildings damaged. The next night they were over Cologne again in an attack 427 aircraft strong, and on 1 March they were among 302 bombers that attacked Berlin. After dropping their pyrotechnic target indicator flares, bombs and incendiaries bomb aimer Alan Ritchie called out that the load had gone. As Isaacson waited for the flash from the on-board cameras there was a terrific explosion. Almost simultaneously, a heavy anti-aircraft shell hit the plane near the tail, and incendiaries from an RAF plane above blew out the top gun turret and wounded Joe Grose in the face. Although the incendiaries failed to detonate they jammed the elevator cables. As ‘Q for Queenie’ dived out of control, parachutes, radio spares, and navigation equipment including the damaged sextant, tumbled into the nose of the aircraft. With his feet planted squarely on the instrument panel, Peter struggled desperately to pull the Lancaster out of a steep plunge through bursting flak.

  The aircraft dived so fast that the airspeed indicator locked at the limit of the dial. Don Delaney tried fruitlessly to stabilise the plane by using the tail trim, while Alan Ritchie fought the pull of gravity to heave himself up the steps from the bomb aimer’s position to the main cabin to try and help Peter drag the stick back. He managed to get leverage beyond the control column from the top and, pushing with his right hand, reinforced the efforts of Don Delaney and the exhausted Isaacson.

  Searchlights and anti-aircraft fire followed the aircraft as it dived, the Lancaster’s wings at risk of tearing off. Gradually the aircraft responded, levelling out at 3000 feet. In the meantime, the mid– upper turret had disappeared. However, gunner Joe Grose staggered forward to the cockpit, where someone gave him a shot of morphine and helped him to the emergency stretcher. With the damage done to the plane Peter struggled to get the Lancaster above 4000 feet. The engines would give him no more than 140 knots.

  The Lancaster staggered on, the crew helpless to know their exact position in the darkness. Peter’s only option was to steer a general westerly course as crew members kept a lookout to pinpoint the plane’s position. Suddenly, a mass of searchlights appeared. They had flown into the Ruhr. To escape the searchlights Peter first turned south but when more lights appeared ahead he decided to go through them. To avoid being coned he flew low, thus making a more difficult target for the anti-aircraft gunners.

  Descending to around 100 feet, the aircraft was picked up by searchlights that held it in dazzling beams, nullifying Peter’s hope to dodge them. The ack-ack gunners opened fire. The noise of the explosions was deafening and the pungent smell of cordite filled the cabin as shells rocked the crippled bomber. Peter corkscrewed violently, but he could not see amid the dazzle of the searchlights. To shield himself from some of the glare, he lowered his seat as far as it would go. Flying blind on instruments, he called on Alan Ritchie to guide him through. Lying on his stomach in the nose of the aircraft, Alan tried to pick a course to direct Peter through the searchlights, the danger of colliding with ground objects adding to the perilous situation. Rooftops of houses were ominously close.

  By now they were over Essen, and Peter zigged and zagged the Lancaster in a desperate bid to escape the most feared anti-aircraft defences in Germany. In the space of just over ten minutes, an estimated sixty heavy anti-aircraft shells exploded around the plane. One burst right under the starboard wing, almost flipping the Lancaster on its back. Then all of a sudden the searchlights and the flak stopped. Peter had nursed the plane back to 4000 feet when they spotted the lights of Brussels; a quick calculation put them 120 nautical miles off track. Navigator Bob Nielsen plotted a course for home. Wireless operator Bill Copley was at last able to raise the RAF base in Cambridgeshire, and sent the following message: ‘Aircraft badly damaged. Mid upper gunner wounded. ETA 0225.’

  As soon as they landed, an ambulance took Joe Grose to hospital, and Peter and the rest of the crew inspected the damaged Lancaster, marvelling at their luck. The top turret had disappeared. Holes up to a metre in diameter had ruptured the side of the aircraft just forward of the rear turret and near the rear door. The rest of the fuselage was pockmarked by shrapnel, and the wing and starboard outer engine had been hit.

  For their part in the plane’s escape, Bill Copley and Bob Nielsen were awarded the DFM. Ritchie, who had helped pull the plane out of its dive and guide Peter through the searchlights and anti-aircraft fire, missed out, having been awarded the DFM for his courage in earlier raids. Peter was awarded the DFC. He wrote to his family that the medal was ‘for getting the kite home after a rather shaky do’.

  After Peter completed forty-four raids, a signal came from the Chief of Air Staff that he and his crew, including Joe Grose, were to take no further part in operational flights and return to Australia with ‘Q for Queenie’. Don Bennett authorised Peter to wear the Pathfinder Force badge permanently.

  Touring Australia to promote war bonds, they drew big crowds. But Peter had something special up his sleeve for the Sydney stop. Without telling his crew, he decided to ‘beat up’ the city and fly ‘Q for Queenie’ under the Sydney Harbour Bridge. At mid-span, he had a gap of just 161 feet beneath the bridge through which to fly the twenty-foot-tall Lancaster. ‘It was not the sort of thing you would ask for permission for—it was certainly not something that would be approved. I felt there was plenty of room, otherwise I wouldn’t have done it,’ he recalled. And he pulled it off nicely. But four days later a wind shift caused the Lancaster to crash at Evans Head, in northern New South Wales. No one was hurt, but the tour was over. Peter now began training pilots as the chief ground instructor at No. 1 Operational Training Unit in East Sale, Victoria.

  8

  THE JAM CAN

  Flight Lieutenant Harold Brownlow Martin was a laconic thirty-two-year-old known as ‘Micky’. He had been pronounced unfit to fly in Australia because of asthma, but worked his passage to England and joined the RAF
in 1940. He combined diffidence to authority and a strong combative spirit. As a pilot in the earliest days of Bomber Command, he quickly grasped the effectiveness of low flying as a means of evading enemy fighters, and he applied himself with relentless concentration to mastering the required skills.

  To fly with Martin, an airman needed nerves of steel. He had a reputation for flying not just low, but dangerously low. On one occasion his Hampden bomber returned to base with a length of power line wrapped around one of its wings. When he went on to Lancasters, his bomb aimers soon became used to seeing foliage disconcertingly close beneath them. To avoid flak, he would fling his Lancaster around like a Spitfire. In October 1942, at the end of his first tour—flown with 455 Squadron RAAF and then 50 Squadron RAF—he was awarded the DFC. Micky was a natural for one of the most audacious operations of the war.

  In early 1943, the English scientist Barnes Wallis hit upon the idea of breaching the German dams in the Ruhr valley. He believed that the resulting deluges would destroy Germany’s industrial heart—whose cities and factories relied on hydroelectric power and used canals as transportation routes. Three dams were chosen: the Möhne, the Eder and the Sorpe. The Möhne and Sorpe were upstream from the Ruhr industrial area, while the Eder dam, near Kassel, was used to generate power and regulate water levels for shipping on the Weser river.

  It seemed a pipe-dream—until Wallis developed the ‘bouncing’ bomb. This drum-shaped bomb was carried in an open bomb bay under the fuselage and attached to a motor that spun it backwards. Dropped at a sufficiently low altitude at the correct speed and with just the right back-spin (500 revolutions per minute on impact), it would skip over the water surface in a series of bounces before reaching the dam wall and sinking. A hydrostatic fuse ensured that the bomb would detonate at the correct depth, breaching the dam. The operation was set for May, when water levels would be at their highest, maximising the destruction caused when the dams burst.