Lancaster Men

by Peter Rees

Eric and Sandy knew each other from Australia, and they had met again when crewing up in a hangar at Waddington. Sandy saw Eric standing in a group and approached him to join his crew. He knew Eric had been scrubbed from pilot training in Australia, so if Sandy was injured Eric would be able to fly the aircraft. Eric was Jewish and knew what that would mean if he were shot down and captured. When he approached the RAF hierarchy and asked them what he should do if this happened, he was advised simply to tell the Germans that he was ‘a British officer and a gentleman’.

  But Sandy had other ideas. When they began flying operations together in April 1944, he organised a separate set of dog tags and a separate log book for Eric. These Anglicised his identity and background, giving no indication of his Jewish heritage. Other Australian Jews in Bomber Command, including Eric Silbert, also had false dog tags to wear on ops. Silbert’s middle name was changed from Abraham to Adrian, and his religion was listed as Church of England.

  Two nights after the Rennes op, Bill McGowen flew to Orléans as part of a force of 532 bombers, including Lancasters from 463 and 467 Squadrons, to attack four rail yards. Under orders not to damage the historic town, the bombers had to be accurate. As they neared the target, two JU-88 night fighters attacked. Wireless operator ‘Ned’ Kelly picked up the fighters on radar and called to pilot Tom Davies, ‘Corkscrew starboard!’ ‘We avoided the main attack, but a loud bang indicated a hit somewhere,’ Bill said. ‘Our port inner motor had been hit and stopped dead. The prop was feathered and we continued on to bomb . . . inspection next day showed that a stray cannon shell had hit it.’

  Their next target was the rail yards at Pozières, as part of a 5 Group raid on the night of 12 June. For Bill, Pozières held special memories. ‘This town was familiar to me as my father had fought there in the First World War with the First AIF. I remember that he told me there had been 5000 Australian casualties on one day and I just prayed that I was not going to be another. However, this was not to be and we had a reasonably quiet trip on return.’

  The final raid of Rollo Kingsford-Smith’s tour came eight days after D-Day. On the night of 14 June he led Lancasters from 463 and 467 Squadrons to Aunay-sur-Odon, near Caen, to attack a German Panzer force. The tanks were concentrated at night in a wood, hiding under cover of trees. ‘With information from the French Resistance forces we knew exactly where they were,’ he recalled of the successful attack.

  Rollo’s replacement as commanding officer of 463 Squadron was Wing Commander Don Donaldson, a fellow RAAF officer. He took over on 19 June, but five days later, while he was flying with a new crew on a raid to bomb railway yards at Limoges and Saintes, his Lancaster was shot down. He was among four crew members who evaded capture; three others were taken prisoner. To fill the vacuum, Rollo briefly resumed leadership of the squadron until the new commanding officer, Bill Forbes, could take over. Bill was a friend who, as a junior officer, had flown Rollo on his first familiarisation flight over Germany the previous October.

  On the same day Don Donaldson had started his new job, 463 and 467 Squadrons headed out with 5 Group to attack a large reinforced-concrete flying-bomb store at Watten, not far from Dunkirk. Visibility was good, and Bill McGowen thought the sea looked quite beautiful, but they were recalled without bombing. On the return flight, however, ‘over a road in Germany which was quite visible, I could see the lights of a vehicle approaching. I stood up in the front turret, sighted on the road and pressed the triggers. The twin machine-guns fired and lines of tracers raced along the road and the vehicle ran into them. A flash of fire and then we were away into the night.’

  A synthetic oil plant in the Ruhr valley was the next target, on the night of 21 June. The bombing was perfect, but Bill was shocked by what happened next: ‘On turning away I could see another Lancaster ahead and below flying through the heavy flak. It was incredible, one moment it was there and the next the sky was empty except for a small patch of smoke. Although we did not know it at the time, this was to be our last time over Germany, for which I thank God. The enemy night fighters were now totally proficient and death was only a matter of time.’

  The rail yards at Vitry-le-François, in Champagne, beckoned on the night of 27 June. The night would live in Bill McGowen’s memory as a raid that, despite 5 Group’s efforts not to put French lives in danger, went horribly wrong. ‘It was said later that Germans had set a spoof marker near the town. However, on this occasion we bombed the town. Later on the French asked me if I was on that raid, but I denied it. It seemed more diplomatic at the time.’ By next morning 500 French people in the city were dead.

  28

  THE BATTLE FOR RECOGNITION

  Alan Evans, a twenty-two-year-old Flight Sergeant from Ipswich in Queensland, was bemused when, just before D-Day, he was handed a pistol. Leonard Cheshire, commanding officer of 617 Squadron at Woodhall Spa, thought that arming his airmen with handguns and Sten guns would be a wise precaution. He was concerned that on or just after D-Day the Germans might drop paratroopers on English airfields. Alan, a wireless operator/air gunner, and a mate, Sammy Watson, went to the local Petwood Hotel to test their marksmanship:

  The pistols were hammerless types and of course one could not ‘cock’ the weapon, so by the time the trigger was squeezed enough to release the hammer and fire, the end of the barrel was scribing circles, and a bird in the air or a worm in the ground would be in danger of being hit. Sammy Watson and I were the two standing at the top of the first flight of stairs at Petwood trying our skills through the bay window.

  After much wild target shooting and several near misses, Cheshire had second thoughts and ordered the men to hand their guns back. Several dozen shattered plates lay scattered about the hotel lawns and a great deal of ammunition was unaccounted for. But Evans and Watson had enjoyed their target practice.

  A coal miner, Alan had applied to join the RAAF when he turned eighteen. Since coal mining was deemed an essential industry, it was some time before he was accepted. In Britain he had joined the crew of another Australian, Flying Officer Arthur Kell, and was initially posted to 467 Squadron. Making up the rest of his crew were Flight Lieutenant Jack Hager, the navigator, from Sydney; Flight Lieutenant Ken Morieson, the bomb aimer, from Melbourne; Flying Officer Fred Snell, the mid-upper gunner, from Brisbane; and Flight Sergeant Jim Chapman, the tail gunner, also from Brisbane. The engineer was an English Flight Sergeant named Johnny Clark. When 467 Squadron was split in two, Alan and the others were posted to 463 Squadron.

  Arthur Kell, their pilot, had inherited Micky Martin’s beloved ‘P for Popsie’ after extensive repairs were completed. A lanky all-round sportsman, he had been the Australian amateur welterweight boxing champion and was considered unlucky not to get to the 1936 Berlin Olympics. By January 1944 the Sydney-born clerk had completed his first tour of operations, including twelve ops to Berlin and one to Düsseldorf. That raid had been flown almost entirely on three engines after a mechanical problem at take-off. With the engine pouring smoke, Arthur feathered it and flew on. By the time he transferred to the 617 ‘Dambusters’ Squadron in February 1944, twenty-six-year-old Arthur had been awarded the first of his two DFCs.

  Two days after D-Day, Arthur and his crew were part of a raid on a bridge and tunnel in the Loire valley, about 200 kilometres from the battle area. Flying in the bomber stream with him were three more Australian pilots: South Australian Flight Lieutenant Ross Stanford, who had transferred from 467 Squadron; Flying Officer Ian Stewart Ross, a twenty-four-year-old from Camperdown, in western Victoria; and Flying Officer Daniel William ‘Bill’ Carey, a twenty-five-year-old from Mount Gambier, South Australia.

  Twenty-eight Lancasters and three target-marking Mosquitos of 617 Squadron, together with four Lancasters from 83 Squadron RAF, were on the raid. They had two targets: the bridge carrying the main line between south-western France and the Normandy invasion area, and the long railway tunnel near Saumur. Intelligence services had reported that a German armoured division was being moved up by rai
l from the Bordeaux region to help in the counterattack against the Allied invasion forces. The aircraft from 83 Squadron were to mark the targets and destroy the bridge, but their flares went wide and the bridge was undamaged.

  At the second target, 617 commander Cheshire accurately marked one end of the tunnel. For the first time, 617 Squadron was using the new Tallboy ‘earthquake’ bombs designed by Barnes Wallis, inventor of the Dambusters’ ‘bouncing’ bombs. The aerodynamically shaped 12,000-pounders spun as they fell—making them more accurate—and penetrated deep into earth or concrete before exploding with a massive shock wave.

  The Lancasters moved in to bomb the Saumur tunnel in the early hours of the morning. Arthur Kell and Ross Stanford were equipped with Tallboys, while Bill Carey and Stewart Ross each carried eight 1000-pound bombs. Direct hits were made on the bridge near the tunnel entrance and on the mountainside above. But the crews did not see the full explosions, merely subterranean flashes of light as the 6.3-metre-long Tallboys tore into the ground and detonated nearly twenty metres down. Earth and chalk heaved violently into the sky as landslides covered the tracks. The most devastating explosion and damage was caused when a bomb landed on the roof of the tunnel, leaving it not just blocked but buried under 10,000 tons of soil and rock. The stretch of line was rendered unusable and the German Panzers were denied access to the battlefields beyond.

  Arthur Kell had an observer pilot on board for the op—Bunny Lee, who in April had finished his tour with 106 Squadron RAF. The chances of Bunny and his crew continuing to fly together had looked slim until he and his English navigator, Alex McKie, approached Leonard Cheshire and volunteered their services. Usually, 617 Squadron crews were carefully selected, but the two mates’ persistence interested Cheshire. He examined their log books and asked Bunny if his entire crew would be interested in joining the squadron. They gladly agreed, provided they could stay together. Alex McKie recalled that the crew had a special bond, largely because Bunny was so strict.

  Each man, whatever the task he had in the aircraft, was really very good at it. That made all the difference. Looking back, I don’t know how we got through it night after night, but then we were young. Some aircrews occasionally smoked as they crossed the English coast. We never did, nor did we use first names on the aircraft. It was always ‘pilot to navigator,’ ‘bomb aimer to pilot’ and so on. It was different on the ground, but in the air discipline was very tight. It had to be, and I believe that was a major reason why we survived.

  Sir Arthur Harris was pleased with Bomber Command’s performance. The strategic bombing of German lines of communication and transportation had prevented the Germans from moving troops, reserves and tanks to Normandy ahead of and after the Allied landings. On D-Day, several German divisions had been about six hours by train from the coast, but it now took a week to get them there. The Germans would later acknowledge that without this pinpoint bombing and the broad umbrella Bomber Command placed over the landing zones, the invasion ships and barges could have been sunk or driven out to sea, rendering the invasion a failure.

  The impact of OVERLORD had been immediate, but the role of Bomber Command received little recognition at the time. The focus was on the ground forces and their rapid advances. Bomber Command’s casualties in the first weeks after D-Day were higher than those of the British Second Army’s three divisions in Normandy. The bombers mounted 15,963 sorties in June 1944 compared with only 5816 in June the year before, but all the attention now was on the ground troops. This prompted Harris to write to Air Marshal Charles Portal:

  I think you should be aware of the full depth of feeling that is being aroused by the lack of adequate or even reasonable credit to the RAF in particular and the air forces as a whole, for their efforts in the invasion. I have no personal ambition that has not years ago been satisfied in full, but I for one cannot forbear a most emphatic protest against the grave injustice which is being done to my crews. There are over 10,500 aircrew in my operational squadrons. In three months we have lost over half that number. They have a right that their story should be adequately told, and it is a military necessity that it should be.

  As well as tactical operations, Bomber Command crews were involved in an intensive campaign to pulverise flying-bomb sites. On 14 and 15 June, they attacked German light naval craft and E-boats—fast attack vessels—in pens at Le Havre and Boulogne. So successful were these attacks that within a period of twenty-four hours the German Navy lost all capability of seriously interfering with the convoys resupplying the invasion force. Reconnaissance aircraft later photographed the devastation at Le Havre, where not a single E-boat had survived the onslaught. Even Barnes Wallis was both surprised and impressed by the devastation his Tallboys had caused.

  The lack of recognition immediately after D-Day was made up for a month later, when Bomber Command began making attacks in support of troops on the battlefield. Harris received a message from Field Marshal Viscount Bernard Montgomery, who had commanded Allied ground forces in the D-Day invasion. Following an attack on enemy troop concentrations near Caen on 7 July 1944, ‘Monty’ wrote:

  Again the Allied armies in France would like to thank you personally and Bomber Command for your magnificent co-operation last night. We know that your main work lies further afield and we applaud your continuous and sustained bombing of German war industries and the effect this has on the German war effort. But we also know well that you are always ready to bring your mighty effort closer in when such action is really needed and to co-operate in our tactical battle. When you do this your action is always decisive. Please tell your brave and gallant pilots how greatly the Allied soldiers admire and applaud their work.

  On 6 July, 617 Squadron attacked a massive underground fortress at Mimoyecques in the Pas de Calais, where the Germans planned to install fifty huge V-3 ‘superguns’ that would be capable of hitting London, some 150 kilometres away. Earlier bombing had reduced the site’s capacity to twenty-five guns, whose barrels were due to be installed in deep angled shafts over the coming months. The danger they posed made this a priority target.

  Reaching the site, Leonard Cheshire—unusually, flying a P-51 Mustang on this occasion—swooped down and marked the camouflaged area from 800 feet with his spot fires. Almost immediately, a Tallboy dropped by Nick Ross’s crew scored a direct hit on the huge reinforced-concrete surface slab. Four more Tallboys fell and exploded close by, probably with greater effect than the direct hit as a result of their earthquake shockwaves.

  Although the gun shafts of Mimoyecques had now been buried and blocked, Arthur Kell’s aircraft had to make a second run after an engine cut out on the first attempt. As well, the Lancasters of the other three Australian pilots were damaged in the raid: Ian Ross’s aircraft suffered flak damage; Bunny Lee jettisoned his Tallboy after his Lancaster was hit in all four engines on the way to the target and shell splinters injured three of his crew; and Ross Stanford’s Lancaster was shot up in the raid. He recalled: ‘I lost my two outer engines and the aircraft’s hydraulics. I managed to nurse her back to England, where we landed on the long runway at Bardwell Bay, just north of the Thames. It was a rather exciting landing; we used the air bottle to get the landing gear down. Les Munro, who flew back with us, took us all back to Woodhall Spa.’

  The Mimoyecques raid marked the end of an era for 617 Squadron. First Leonard Cheshire, and then three veterans of the original Dambusters op to the Ruhr valley—Dave Shannon, the American Joe McCarthy, and Les Munro—were posted as tour-expired. They enjoyed a riotous send-off party. Having completed his 100th op, Cheshire was compulsorily retired from active service. Shortly after, he was awarded the Victoria Cross, not for any single act of gallantry, but for his unflagging courage and his incomparable example.

  Having completed sixty-nine operations without a meaningful break, Dave Shannon was awarded two DSOs and two DFCs before he left 617 Squadron as a wing commander on 25 June 1944. He agreed to serve as Chief Flying Instructor at No. 27 (Australian) OTU, in
Derbyshire, from July 1944. But after just three months he grew restless with the desk job and asked to revert to his previous rank of squadron leader. That enabled him to join an operational unit flying Avro Yorks and Liberators on trunk routes until he was demobilised in December 1945.

  29

  THE SWEETEST WORDS OF ALL

  When Bill Purdy and his new navigator, Cairns-born twenty-six-year-old Gordon Earl, flew to St-Leu-d’Esserent, in the Oise valley, south of Paris, on the night of 7 July 1944 their goal was to destroy caverns that had once been used to grow mushrooms. However, the Germans had turned them into a storage depot for the world’s first cruise missiles. A single V-1 flying bomb delivered a tonne of high explosive. Between June 1944 and March 1945, 2419 of them rained down on London, killing more than 6000 people and seriously injuring another 18,000.

  The attack, by 208 Lancasters and thirteen Mosquitos from 5 Group, was Gordon Earl’s first op. The bombing was accurate, blocking the mouths of the tunnels and sealing in the flying bombs they held. But it was a bright, moonlit night, and a swarm of German night fighters intercepted the bombers over the target. Bill had to call on all his instincts to stay alive: ‘I saw eighteen kites go down in about twenty minutes. One of Gordon’s jobs was to log aircraft as they were shot down. He was in his navigator’s cubicle and he came out and asked, “What’s going on?” When he saw what was happening, he said, “Jesus Christ!” He never came out of his cubicle again.’

  Twenty-nine Lancasters and two Mosquitos—a devastating fourteen per cent of the bomber force—were lost. Bill Purdy was adamant that the toll would have been three times as bad if not for a complete change in tactics:

  Instead of the usual bomber stream approach we planned to arrive over the target, all at the same minute, but approaching from all directions spread through 180 degrees and from heights from 20,000 to 5000 feet and depart in the same random fashion. It was for this reason that the losses were mainly confined to the target area where there were Lancs going down, literally by the dozen, faster than Gordon Earl could record—a very dramatic scene.