CONTENTS
Title Page
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
ONE: THE FLYING MACHINE
TWO: A TIME AND A PLACE
THREE: THE WAR IN NORFOLK
FOUR: ‘WHERE’S EVERYBODY ELSE, MORRISON?’
FIVE: RISING FROM THE ASHES
SIX: DIFFERENT SORT OF CHAP ALTOGETHER
SEVEN: AT ALL COSTS, IF POSSIBLE
EIGHT: TO TELL THE TALE, YOU HAVE TO LIVE
APPENDIX: 82 SQUADRON AIRCRAFT AND CREWS AT GEMBLOUX AND ÅLBORG
POSTSCRIPT
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Plates
Copyright
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Grateful thanks are due to Julian Horn, historian of RAF Watton and 82 Squadron, who provided photographs, the letter from Freddie Thripp and much besides; Peter Cornwell for research into the events of 17 May; John Lart for new information on his uncle; and Søren Flensted, Jørn Junker and Carsten Petersen for photographs.
Above all, many thanks to Ole Bang Rønnest, for photographs and without whose meticulous research (he is a retired Danish police CSI officer) on the Ålborg raid an accurate story would have been impossible. With Ole’s permission, his own account of the raid, recorded some years ago when he was able to contact some of the survivors, has been heavily mined for this book.
CHAPTER ONE
THE FLYING MACHINE
The eighty-second squadron of the Royal Flying Corps was formed at Doncaster on 7 January 1917 and moved to France and the Great War in November, based in the Aisne and Oise areas of the Western Front. Matters such as squadron mottoes and badges were not uppermost in wartime minds and, for some reason now forgotten, No. 82’s badge was a picture of a steaming kettle with the sun in the background. Squadron equipment was the Armstrong Whitworth FK8, so named because it was one of a series designed by Dutch engineer Frederick Koolhoven. Like all Royal Flying Corps machines not specifically designed as fighters, it was a general-purpose, workhorse type of biplane expected to defend itself if necessary. Called by its airmen Big Ack, it was not as well known nor as widely used as the Royal Aircraft Factory RE8 (called Harry Tate) but was more popular with pilots.
Compared with the fighters on both sides, such machines were big and slow – consider the FK8’s wingspan of 43 feet and top speed of 95mph against the SE5A’s 26 feet and 140mph or, more to the point, the Fokker DVII at 29 feet and 125mph – but the FK8, RE8 and the BE2 that went before were not meant for aerial combat. They were steady, reliable platforms for reconnaissance, bombing (such as it was then), spotting for the artillery and ‘contact patrols’ – very low flying following the progress of infantry advances on ‘battle days’. The FK8’s speed was rather less than 95mph when fully loaded with its 260lb of bombs. Its main defence was a Lewis gun fired by the observer; its additional fixed, forward-facing Vickers machine gun could be fired by the pilot but rarely was except in strafing ground targets.
In the last months of the war, new uses were found for the FK8, such as dropping supplies to the advancing Allied troops, but the Armistice signalled the end of the aircraft’s useful life and the temporary end of 82 Squadron.
Before 1920 was out, the British air force, now the RAF, had been reduced to one fighter squadron and four army co-operation squadrons at home; five Imperial policing squadrons in Egypt, four more in each of India and Iraq and one in the Far East. In round numbers, 23,000 officers, 21,000 cadets and 227,000 other ranks had been demobilised and the Women’s Royal Air Force disbanded.
The men-only RAF thus consisted of 3,280 officers and 25,000 other ranks, most of it overseas. More than 160 squadrons had been dissolved and dismissed, and the next few years were characterised by attacks on the RAF itself: by the two other armed services and by those politicians and commentators who thought it too expensive for Britain to afford. Its success in policing the Empire in a most economical fashion and, curiously, government concerns about the intentions of the old enemy, France, which had retained a much bigger air force, ensured the survival of the RAF with a capacity for both defence – fighters – and offence, bombers.
A question for the air force and the government was – what sort of bombers? Did they want big machines that could carry heavy loads to lay waste large areas, or smaller ones that could dart in and out of specific targets, delivering swift tactical blows?
Here is a French expert, Georges Prade, writing in 1916. He classifies four uses for, and therefore types of, military aircraft: reconnaissance scouts, artillery observation machines, battleplanes (fighters or chasers), and bomb-droppers:
The bomb-dropper is the Dreadnought of the air. It must include among its qualities a certain minimum of speed, climbing power, and manoeuvring capacity to enable it to escape from the fire of anti-air guns. As for chasers, bomb-droppers must not be expected to defend themselves against these. They must be escorted by squadrons which have nothing else to do. Bombarding fleets [should] always include several squadrons, operating on well-determined itineraries, known in advance, at fixed hours. Thus, convoying them is easy. It has been found possible to group in this way 50 machines, which, flying in a triangle like wild duck, have gone as far as the large cities of South Germany [from France]. These machines must therefore have powerful motors – 200 h.p. – a large range of action, and large fuselage, permitting the well-aimed dropping of bombs by special apparatus. They should also carry a machine gun.
This is the most difficult machine to construct, and the task of he who pilots it is both ungrateful and perilous – long raids over enemy territory.
Monsieur Prade was of the opinion that bomber meant heavy bomber, escorted by fighters, and the RAF agreed to an extent. All the way through the 1920s and most of the 1930s, large, slow biplanes were strategic equipment, for example the Vickers Virginia, a machine closely resembling and hardly outperforming the Vickers Vimy of 1917.
By 1936, the threat from Germany was becoming rather more obvious, but Britain had no aircraft that would have been able to fly to Germany from home ground, deliver a usefully damaging amount of bombs, and get back again. The RAF went into a period of expansion and the new RAF Commands were formed – Fighter, Bomber, Coastal and Training – with the Commands split into Groups according to primary task and aircraft type. No. 3 Group of Bomber Command would have the heavy bombers, such as they might be, while 1 and 2 Groups would fly the light bombers for supporting ground forces.
It was obvious to bomber strategists that their job would be a hard one. All thought was of precision targets; that meant going in daylight because such targets could not be found at night. If they were to go in daylight, the only way they could reach their targets would be if they could defend themselves against fighter attack and somehow avoid the shooting from the ground.
Flying in close formation, with cloud cover, could be the answer if clouds could be predicted accurately, or at all, and if it were possible to keep formation in the clouds when bomber crews couldn’t see each other. Keeping formation while attacking, and while under attack, would be even more difficult, which made things doubly questionable when the tight formation was the given means of defence.
Flying too quickly for the ground gunners would also be good, if only there were an aircraft that could go that fast. Having long-range fighter escorts would also be very welcome, if only such were available.
German targets did not become practicable until the faster, monoplane light bombers began coming into service in 1937: the Vickers Wellesley (180mph, 2,000lb bombs), the Fairey Battle (260mph, 1,000lb bombs) and the Bristol Blenheim (269mph, 1,000lb bombs Mark I, 266mph, 1,000lb bombs plus 320lb bombs carried externally Mark IV,).
Bigger aircraft were wanted too, and they
came in around the same time: the Armstrong Whitworth Whitley (220mph, 7,000lb bombs), the Handley Page Hampden (250mph, 4,000lb bombs) and, at last, the Vickers Wellington (240mph, 4,500lb bombs).
H P Folland, designer of the SE5A and Gloster Gladiator biplane fighters, wrote in June 1939: ‘Present heavily loaded bombers of the multi-engined type are, and will be, at least 80mph slower than interceptor fighters, and I consider it very doubtful whether a sufficient number of machines would reach their target, except under special conditions such as in poor weather and at night.’ So, long before the introduction of four-engined heavy bombers, he favoured the hit-and-run type of bomber, and he designed one (see diagram). Events were to prove him wrong.
Built for speed, Folland’s single-seater hit-and-run bomber looks more like a Spitfire than a Lancaster, and it was large-scale strategic bombing that would be the way forward. Designs along Folland lines, such as the Fairey Battle and the Bristol Blenheim, which were neither fighter nor heavyweight bomber, would prove just how disastrously wrong was the Folland school of thought, at enormous cost to aircrew.
No. 82 Squadron was reformed as a light bomber unit in 2 Group, equipped with the Hawker Hind, at Andover on 14 June 1937. The Hind was an improved version of a 1920s design, the Hawker Hart, although the improvements did not result in better performance. It was still a small biplane, less than 40 feet wingspan, able to fly at 185mph and carrying only 500lb of bombs. It was decidedly an interim measure while those better aircraft mentioned above were in development.
The squadron was not alone in being ill-equipped. All the 2 Group bombers were biplanes, mostly without wireless sets, armed with a couple of machine guns and carrying a war load that, in size and composition, was suitable only for Imperial duties. As an anonymous contributor wrote in a contemporary edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica, ‘Aircraft have proved of the utmost value for the control of semicivilised or uncivilised countries and for carrying out those classes of wars which may be grouped under the term of tribal operations.’ The classes of war for which 82 Squadron was formed could not have been so grouped.
The strength of the ‘new’ squadron was thirteen each of officers, senior NCOs and corporals, and fifty-three of lower ranks. The first commanding officer was Squadron Leader Norman Charles ‘Shorty’ Pleasance who, as Group Captain and station commander of RAF Waddington, would be killed in a 9 Squadron Lancaster on an operation to Frankfurt on 22 March 1944, flying as sightseeing passenger with Flying Officer Albert Manning. Although liable to get in a lather when under pressure, Shorty Pleasance was generally well regarded, a nice old boy, approachable. He’d done his years of Empire protection on the North West Frontier and, later, would run a large part of the pilot training programme in Canada. At 9 Squadron, with no need to go on ops at all, he was killed on his third trip trying to keep in touch with what his boys were facing routinely.
Andover was 82 Squadron’s base for only three weeks, before moving to Cranfield, Bedfordshire, where they formed a station with 108 and 62 Squadrons. All three flew the old biplanes, had accidents including one fatality, and waited for the new aircraft to turn up.
That better machine arrived at 82 Squadron in 1938, the Bristol Blenheim, a quite remarkable advance on what had gone before. Not only was it a hundred miles an hour faster than the Hind; it was faster than the fighters then in service with the RAF, which were biplanes such as the Gloster Gladiator. If anyone noticed that the Messerschmitt Bf 109 was already in service with the Luftwaffe, an aircraft that had set a new speed record of almost 380mph, the implications for the Blenheim were not fully understood.
Rather, the Blenheim was seen as a very exciting aircraft, superfast, super-modern, the best bomber in an unsettled continent – which it was, at the time. Its origins, however, lay not in any Air Ministry specification but in the foresight of the Bristol Aeroplane Company, leading it to design a small, high-speed passenger plane in 1933, and in the desire of a wealthy businessman for something revolutionary, a fast, luxurious, executive aircraft.
The Bristol Type 135 would be a low-wing monoplane, carrying two crew and eight passengers. It would have all-metal construction and two 500hp nine-cylinder Bristol Aquila engines. The non-flying full-scale model was put on show at the 1935 International Air Show in Paris.
Meanwhile, Lord Rothermere, the flamboyant owner of the Daily Mail, expressed his wish for an aeroplane that would carry him and five colleagues quickly to wherever he wanted to go. His money and the Type 135 were soon united in the redesignated Bristol Type 142, with more powerful engines and a sleeker shape to achieve the range that his lordship required. Rothermere ended up with a bill for £18,500, roughly £5 million in today’s money.
Rothermere’s machine, named Britain First, flew at Filton on 12 April 1935. It was a spectacular success, 30mph faster than the Gloster Gauntlet, the recently introduced open-cockpit biplane fighter that was then the RAF’s speediest aircraft. The Air Ministry asked if they could have Britain First for a while, to see if it might be converted to a bomber, and Lord Rothermere agreed. Harold Harmsworth, first Viscount Rothermere, was a noted Nazi sympathiser, later writing to Hitler to congratulate him on annexing Czechoslovakia, but he did recognise the longer-term military threat to Great Britain. He also believed that modern aerial bombardment would defeat and ruin a country in short order, a possibility for which Britain was very ill prepared. So, despite his admiration for the new Germany, he presented Britain First to the nation.
RAF trials at Martlesham Heath, Suffok, were so promising that the Air Ministry issued Specification B28/35 for a military version. Bristol’s answer to the spec was accepted and an order placed for 150 aircraft in September 1935. The main changes to Lord Rothermere’s executive carriage were a bomb-aimer’s station, a bomb bay and a dorsal gun turret, more powerful engines (Bristol Mercury VIII) and movement of the wings to mid-fuselage. The prototype flew on 25 June 1936, official trials began that October and the first deliveries to squadrons of the Blenheim, as it now was, started in March 1937.
Pilot and observer/navigator/bomb-aimer sat at the front while the wireless operator/air gunner (WOp/AG) was jammed into the turret. The bomb bay was in the wing centre-section; defensive weaponry was a fixed .303 inch Browning machine-gun in the port wing and a single Vickers .303 machine-gun in the turret. Range with war load was said to be 1,125 miles and/or five and a half hours.
Speed had been at the heart of the design. The results in terms of crew accommodation might have been halfway reasonable for a civil version, meant only to flip his lordship and guests from meeting to meeting, but the slim fuselage and the pointed nose gave very little room for a crew to go to war. The pilot’s view was quite restricted, especially of the ground while landing and of his instruments while flying. Some controls were behind his back.
The WOp/AG had responsibility for his gun, his transmitter/ receiver – a primitive machine by later standards requiring constant attention and a certain amount of inspiration to keep it working – and for much else of the electrics, including lights and the intercom. The intercom was very important indeed, the sound of the engines being loud enough to deafen all inside the aircraft. The WOp/AG was physically isolated too; crawling space between the nose and the turret was cramped by the main spar. In battle, the observer/navigator, say, trying to reach a wounded gunner would have had to take his parachute off to get through, and wouldn’t have had room to do anything very helpful should he have managed it.
For the single machine gun, the WOp/AG had 1,600 rounds of ammunition, ordinary .303 rifle bullets, carried in pans of 100 rounds. The theoretical firing rate of 1,200 rounds a minute may have been faster than its direct German equivalent but it was nothing compared to the thousands a minute of a Messerschmitt’s combined cannon and guns. Firing and pan-changing in combat would prove to be an intensive activity for the poor WOp/AG.
The observer – and navigator/bomb-aimer – had a very cramped office with no room for a proper chart table. As was the c
ase throughout the RAF and the Luftwaffe, he had no navigation aids of any kind, beyond the traditional ones of eyes, map, compass and timepiece, and stars on a clear night if he carried his own sextant. His bombsight showed only minor technical advance on the Wimperis Course Setting Bomb Sight used in the old biplane bombers that flew 150mph slower than he did and with smaller bombs.
Bomb bays were of the old type too, with doors held shut by elastic cords. When the bombs were released, they fell on the doors, forced them open and then, after a small but important amount of time that could only be estimated, dropped towards the target. If there was a mathematical formula for calculating air speed with wind speed with weight of bombs versus strength of bungee cords at X thousand feet, bomb-aimers didn’t know it and so pinpoint accuracy could not be achieved at any kind of safe height, although it was often expected.
This basic problem was not really recognised at the time, because all bombing practice was on precision targets, unopposed of course, often at low level. There was no possibility of simulating attack from Wehrmacht anti-aircraft guns and Messerschmitt fighters while the Blenheims flew straight and level at a convenient height in their attempts to hit a certain oil refinery.
The pilot was the captain, regardless of rank. It was possible that a sergeant pilot would have an officer observer, if unlikely, but the WOp/AG was almost certainly aircraftman rank, AC2 (Aircraftman Second Class), AC1 (Aircraftman First Class) or LAC (Leading Aircraftman). For the pilot, changing from the machines he knew like the Hind and the Avro Anson to the Blenheim was something similar to passing your driving test in an Austin Seven then being given a Bentley Speed Six for your birthday.
The Anson was another development from a civil aircraft, an airliner that became an unsuitable bomber that turned into a trainer and reconnaissance machine. The Mark I was the first RAF plane with a retractable undercarriage, although pilots often forwent this facility as it required well over 100 turns on a hand-crank to bring up the wheels. When it came to the Blenheim, with hydraulic undercart retraction, pilots sometimes forgot they had no wheels on landing approaches and quite a few pancake crashes ensued, while the major differences in performance between Anson and Blenheim, especially in landing approach, also contributed to the wreckage. Both of these machines were entirely different again from the Hind.
The Squadron That Died Twice Page 1
