1 Group
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1 Group: Swift to Attack
Bomber Command’s Unsung Heroes
Patrick Otter
First published in Great Britain in 2012 by
PEN AND SWORD AVIATION
an imprint of
Pen and Sword Books Ltd
47 Church Street
Barnsley
South Yorkshire S70 2AS
Copyright © Patrick Otter, 2012
9781783830534
The right of Patrick Otter to be identified
as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance
with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Foreword
Introduction
Acknowledgements
Chapter 1 - Genesis
Chapter 2 - The Leaders
Chapter 3 - Enter the Wellington
Chapter 4 - Expansion
Chapter 5 - ‘Right on the Chin!’
Chapter 6 - Enter the Heavies
Chapter 7 - Happy Valley
Chapter 8 - Fire and Brimstone
Chapter 9 - Bigger and Better
Chapter 10 - Confusion to the Enemy
Chapter 11 - The Big City
Chapter 12 - The Perfect Pilot
Chapter 13 - Hard Times
Chapter 14 - Learning the Ropes
Chapter 15 - One Man’s Story
Chapter 16 - A Long Hot Summer
Chapter 17 - The Highest Degree of Courage
Chapter 18 - Where it Hurts Most
Chapter 19 - ‘They Were All Mad Buggers!’
Chapter 20 - Daylight at Last
Chapter 21 - ‘Living in a Sea of Mud’
Chapter 22 - The Veterans
Chapter 23 - Aftermath
Chapter 24 - The Airfields and Squadrons of 1 Group
Chapter 25 - 1 Group Today
On Hallowed Ground
Bibliography
Index
Foreword
Today, the men and women of 1 Group are the RAF’s primary warfighters and play the dominant role in the delivery of air power both at home and on operations overseas. In this invaluable record, however, Patrick Otter reminds us of a time when 1 Group was but one of many groups engaged in a war of national survival that required ordinary men and women to perform extraordinary feats. One cannot fail to be humbled and moved in equal measure by the tales of individual heroism and collective sacrifice as Patrick Otter vividly describes the human cost of war not in an abstract way but through the particular experiences of individual crews. The narrative is complemented by an impressive array of black and white photographs that add colour to the reader’s understanding of the personal contribution. The faces look familiar, conveying conventional emotion in those who posed and much more profound feeling in those less poised. As the exceptional experience of the Bomber Command crews makes the inevitable transition from living history to the written word, Patrick Otter is to be congratulated for capturing in encyclopaedic detail the experiences of those within 1 Group. He has recorded for all time their contribution and, in doing so, has created a fitting tribute to their memory. 1 Group operations today, such as those over Libya or Afghanistan, may differ in terms of scale and the casualties incurred, but the character and quality of the men and women of 1 Group endures and there is much about those in 1 Group today that would appear familiar to those who served 70 years ago. Thanks to Patrick this book reminds us, to paraphrase the closing ode from Cedric Keith St George Roberts, how a very special generation gave all their tomorrows, and all they had to give, for our freedom. We who serve in 1 Group today, salute those who went before, honour their memory and are grateful to them for our hard won freedom.
Air Vice Marshal Stuart Atha DSO ADC
Air Officer Commanding 1 Group
December 2012
Introduction
This is the wartime story of 1 Group of RAF Bomber Command. It came into being in the summer of 1940, re-formed from the remnants of a light bomber force which had been all but destroyed in the month following the German invasion of the Low Countries and France. Five years later it was amongst the most powerful elements in Britain’s armed forces, able to wreak destruction on an awesome scale with the greatest degree of accuracy then available.
1 Group’s badge and motto.
1 Group was to fly from airfields in Lincolnshire, Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire and, in its five year war, was to lose almost 1,900 aircraft, the majority of them Lancasters, and the lives of 8,760 men, around one in seven of all those killed in Bomber Command operations. It flew at various times from 23 different airfields and, by the war’s end, became one of the largest of all groups within Bomber Command.
How it began. Fairey Battles equipped the first 1 Group squadrons in the summer of 1940. (Author’s collection)
It lived to some degree in the shadow of its Lincolnshire neighbours in 5 Group, whose squadrons included the Dambusters of 617 and whose men included the likes of Guy Gibson, Leonard Cheshire and ‘Babe’ Learoyd. No VCs went to the men of 1 Group, although one young Wellington pilot was recommended for the medal only for the award to be downgraded to a CGM for what was purely geographic reasons. Yet their numbers included squadrons which flew the highest number of sorties, dropped the greatest number of bombs and suffered the highest casualties in the whole of Bomber Command. In all, 1 Group squadrons lost more than 1,500 aircraft in wartime operations, including over a thousand Lancasters, plus many more in accidents and in training. They were, very much, the unsung heroes of the bomber war.
There was nothing glamorous about the job they did. Crews were expected to fly 30 operations before they could think about survival. Until the later days of the war few managed to achieve that many. Their’s was a cold, lonely and terrifying war, trapped in searchlights over the Ruhr, hounded by night-fighters over Berlin. Only German U-boat crews suffered higher casualties than the men of Bomber Command. Yet, when the war ended, there were to be no campaign medals for them although, belatedly, the remaining survivors are to finally receive recognition with the issue of a Special Bomber Command ‘clasp’. Churchill scarcely mentioned their contribution in his wartime memoirs. Yet without Bomber Command German industry would have been vastly more productive and huge numbers of men, guns and aircraft would have been released to fight elsewhere. Bomber Command fought Britain’s Second Front from the summer of 1940 until the spring of 1944 and its efforts ensured the success of the Normandy inva
sion. That was something completely overlooked by the post-war apologists for Dresden, whose views did much to ensure that Bomber Command veterans never got the recognition their courage and sacrifice deserved.
How it ended. A Lancaster of 12 Squadron over Lincolnshire, spring 1945. (Wickenby Archive)
Lancasters en route for Germany, 1945. (Sir Guy Lawrence)
For me, this is very much a personal story. My father was one of the 55,000 Bomber Command men who never came back, a 5 Group navigator killed over Berlin six months before I was born. My first playground was a disused 1 Group bomber airfield, my first toy a brass Spitfire cast from anti-aircraft shells.
1 Group’s motto was ‘Swift to Attack’. It was one they upheld magnificently. This is how they did it.
Patrick Otter
Lincolnshire 2013
Acknowledgements
It was a beautiful summer’s day in the early 1980s when I first became fascinated by the story of Bomber Command’s wartime 1 Group.
In my job as a Lincolnshire journalist I attended one of the annual services held by veterans of 625 Squadron, a former 1 Group squadron, on the site of their old airfield at Kelstern. It was one of those rare days on the Lincolnshire Wolds when there was little wind. The sun was shining brightly and that afternoon I got to meet a large group of men who, 40 years earlier, had taken off nightly from almost exactly the spot where we were standing. As I passed amongst them I realised that these were men with a very special bond holding them together. One was a solicitor, another was a shopkeeper, another worked as a mechanic, yet that afternoon they were all back in time at Kelstern circa 1944, all wearing the same uniforms, sharing the comradeship that only a bomber crew could experience and all facing the likelihood of imminent death.
They were willing to tell me about their experiences back then, about the hairy trips, the jaunts into Louth, a whole crew packed into an Austin Seven. They were, I realised, talking about a piece of history which had occurred just about in my lifetime and later, when I reflected on those conversations in the Lincolnshire sunshine, I felt it was time someone recorded their experiences so that their story could be told for future generations.
Over the next few months I began to research the history of wartime Bomber Command, and particularly that part which took place in my home county of Lincolnshire. It was something I found particularly poignant as my own father was among Bomber Command’s 55,000 casualties.
It became clear to me that in the numerous books which appeared in the post-war years concerning Bomber Command’s activities, the role of 1 Group appeared to be overshadowed, particularly by its south Lincolnshire neighbours, 5 Group. This was, to a degree, understandable: 5 Group was, for much of the war, the largest of the six groups which comprised Bomber Command’s strike force. Its numbers included some of Bomber Command’s elite squadrons, including the Dambusters of 617, and it was inevitable that when the bombing war was talked or written about, the spotlight would fall on 5 Group and its squadrons, including that which my father had served in. Then there was the East Anglian-based 3 Group which was amongst the first to operate four-engined ‘heavies’, 4 Group, which flew exclusively from Yorkshire and the all-Canadian 6 Group. Of 1 Group, however, little had been written.
In the late 1980s I wrote and had published through my then-employers a series of illustrated books under the umbrella title Maximum Effort telling the stories of some of those men who flew with 1 Group. It was not a definitive history, simply a journalist’s take on what it must have been like to fly bombers from North Lincolnshire between 1940 and 1945. It was told largely through letters and interviews with large numbers of those who took part, both as aircrew and ground staff. I was fortunate in that my timing couldn’t have been better: most of these men were approaching or just into retirement and a time of reflection in their lives. Many explained in their letters that they finally felt able to put down in words what they had experienced all those years ago. Supporting the stories were literally hundreds of photographs, willingly loaned to me by these extraordinary men and women.
This book is intended to take the story a stage further, weaving those recollections into a narrative covering the operational life of 1 Group from the day it was reformed in the summer of 1940 until the cessation of hostilities in Europe five years later.
Time marches on and most of those who contributed are now, unfortunately, no longer with us but my hope is that this account will keep their experiences and memories alive for future generations. I would like to take this opportunity to thank them all for what they did and trusting me with their recollections.
Many more have helped contribute to this story and, if I omit to mention anyone, I apologise now.
One man who deserves special thanks is David Irving, a Liverpool postman who began researching the story of George Ashplant during the 1990s as part of a project to discover what happened to the men whose names appear on the war memorial in Halewood. He generously turned over the fruits of his endeavours to me but sadly passed away before he could see the publication of this book.
When my researches began I was able to turn to the many squadron associations for help, people like Clem Koder, Percy Miller and Eric Thale at the 625 Association, who I had first met that afternoon at Kelstern. Others readily offered their assistance, including Vic Redfern, keeper of 101 Squadron’s archives and albums, Edward Martin at the Wickenby Register, John Lamming of 103 Squadron, Shirley Westrup, guardian of the records of 103 and 576 Squadrons during their time at Elsham, Jim Wright, who ran the 166 Squadron Association, Zygmunt Bednarksi of 300 Squadron, Roland Hardy, who kept a wonderful collection of 550 Squadron photographs, Vernon Wilkes of 150, Freddie Fish of 170 Squadron and many, many more. Now the task of keeping the records of those squadrons has, in the main, passed to others and they have been just as helpful.
I must give a special word of thanks to David Fell, who now looks after the Elsham Wolds Association and runs an excellent website. David is the font of all knowledge about Elsham and kindly supplied dozens of wonderful photographs. The Wickenby Register, which represented those who flew with 12 and 626 Squadrons, closed in 2011but its spirit is kept alive by those volunteers who run the small museum there. One of their number is Anne Law who supplied a multitude of pictures, most of which have never been published before.
I also must thank David Briggs and Martin Nichols, who operate a superb website dedicated to RAF Fiskerton, both a 5 and 1 Group station, and without prompting put all their collection of 576 Squadron photographs at my disposal. They are part of a network of enthusiasts whose determination to keep alive the spirit of Bomber Command shows no sign of waning. Thanks also to Nic Lewis who is now the guardian of 625 Squadron memorabilia, the squadron which started it all for me and who also generously supplied photographs and gave me access to his late father’s log book.
I must also thank the Holford family for their help in compiling the story of W/Cmdr David Holford. It was only thanks to the power of the internet (how did we manage before?) that I was to contact them and they supplied copious amounts of material to help tell the story of one of the most remarkable men to fly with 1 Group.
The spirit of 1 Group is kept alive in Australia by the surviving members of the 460 Squadron Association, including the indefatigable Laurie and Barbara Woods, and I’d like to thank them for their contribution. A special mention also to David Butler and his colleagues at the Real Aero Club at Breighton for their valuable help.
A special thanks, too, for my friends Martin Shiplee, Vince McDonagh, Peter Chapman, Brian Frith, Greg Brett and Derrick Rowbotham for providing additional sources of information. Dick Preston was incredibly helpful in providing material and illustrations on the development of the Rose turret, dipping deeply into the archives of Baker Perkins, which now owns the old Rose Brothers factory in Gainsborough. So, too, were all those other individuals who raided their own archives to willingly provide pictures for this book. Thanks, too, to my editor, Richard Gardner for
his words of encouragement, and to Laura Hirst at Pen & Sword for all her invaluable assistance.
And then, of course, there’s the man every aviation author turns to at times like this, Peter Green. I have known Peter now for over 30 years and I have never found him anything but generous in the extreme. He has an unrivalled collection of photographs and, I must say, knowledge of Bomber Command which far extends beyond mine. Peter is, and always has been, the ultimate enthusiast for all things linked to aviation but what sets him aside is his willingness to share his collection with people like me. Despite advancing years, that enthusiasm still knows no bounds. I feel privileged to have been one of the many who have turned to Peter Green for assistance.
Finally, I would like to thank those who persuaded me to tackle this book, my wife Eva and son Chris, a better and more accomplished historian than I’ll ever be. Without their encouragement this project would have still be nothing more than a folder in my computer’s memory. I dedicate this book to them, the most important people in my life, along, of course, with our wonderful grandsons Nicholas and Sam.
Map of Bases
Chapter 1
Genesis
Autumn 1939 – Autumn 1940
Bomber Command’s wartime 1 Group was formed on the very day of France’s final humiliation at the hands of Adolf Hitler, its leaders forced to sign an Armistice in the same railway carriage at the same spot on the forest of Compiègne where the Great War came to its conclusion.