1 Group

by Patrick Otter

  300 and 301 were formed in July at Bramcote in Nottinghamshire, each with a joint Polish and RAF commanding officer, the latter in an ‘advisory’ capacity, and with a British adjutant and largely British technical staff.

  In August they moved to the still-to-be completed airfield at Swinderby, alongside the Fosse Way, the old Roman road from Lincoln to Newark. Swinderby was one of the second tranche Expansion airfields and was still far from finished when the Poles arrived, which prompted Waclaw Makowski, the first CO of 300, to record: ‘No chairs, no beds, no bar and no vodka!’ There was such a shortage of everything that many personnel had to be accommodated temporarily at another nearly-finished airfield, Winthorpe, on the outskirts of Newark.

  The Poles flew operationally for the first time on the night of September 14/15, sending no fewer than 32 Battles, the entire strength of the two squadrons, to attack invasion barges. Over the next few weeks they took part in several more attacks on the Channel ports, losing just two aircraft, one from 301 which was shot down and a second from 300 which crashed near Nottingham on its return from Calais, killing all three men on board.

  304 and 305 Squadrons, in the meantime, were still working up on their Battles when the order came that they were to convert to Wellingtons, which meant their operational debut was to be delayed. Then came the order to move to the new airfield at Syerston, just off the Newark to Nottingham road, not far from Newton where 103 and 150 Squadrons were also in the process of converting to Wellingtons.

  A new chapter in the wartime history of 1 Group was about to begin.

  Chapter 2

  The Leaders

  1 Group’s Commanding Officers

  When the man charged with taking 1 Group to war strode into his office for the first time at the end of June 1940 he found he had little to command. That day 1 Group consisted of the battered remnants of four Fairey Battle squadrons, recently evacuated in great haste and without much of their equipment from France. It had only one airfield it could call its own and that still wasn’t finished.

  And yet the task facing Air Commodore John Breen was immense. Within weeks there was a very real possibility that German troops would be on British soil and somehow he had to forge together a bomber force to help stop them.

  ‘Bomber’ Harris , popularly known amongst his crews as ‘Bert’ or ‘Butch’. (Author’s records)

  Breen was to be one of four men to lead 1 Group through the Second World War. He was a career airman who had been there on April 1, 1918 when the Royal Air Force came into being although, initially at least, he flew little more than a desk. In the post war years he was Director of Organisation and Staff at the Air Ministry, during which time he was promoted to squadron leader. But more exotic postings called and, after qualifying as a pilot with 24 Squadron at Northolt, he was posted to Iraq where he initially commanded the RAF’s Armoured Car Wing, three companies of armoured cars which operated so successfully that they became the template for the formation of the RAF Regiment in the Second World War. Breen went on to command 84 Squadron in Iraq which was operating Wapiti light bombers before returning to England where he was appointed CO of 33 Squadron at Eastchurch. He then joined the Air Staff, serving initially in the Sudan before being appointed Senior Air Staff Officer at 4 Group, then led by Air Vice Marshal Arthur Harris, the man who was to lead Bomber Command for much of the Second World War.

  Breen’s tenure with 1 Group was to be a short one and he was succeeded at the end of November 1940 by Air Vice Marshal Robert Oxland. He had joined the RFC back in 1915 and had served as a meteorological officer in Iraq in the 1920s followed by spells at Aldergrove in Northern Ireland and at Digby in Lincolnshire before becoming Director of Personnel Services at the Air Ministry in the 1930s. He had built a strong reputation as an organiser and it was this quality which Bomber Command was looking for as it began to rapidly expand.

  Bawtry Hall, 1 Group’s headquarters for much of the war. (Author’s records)

  It was AVM Oxland who oversaw the first major expansion of 1 Group. When he took over in the late autumn of 1940 he had just six squadrons, all of which had or were in the process of re-equipping with twin-engined Wellingtons. He was in charge when Group headquarters moved from Hucknall to Bawtry Hall, just south of Doncaster, in July, 1941 and when he left in February 1943 1 Group was a different beast and was on the verge of becoming the hugely powerful all-Lancaster bomber group which was to play such a vital role in the final 27 months of the war. So highly was Oxland rated that he left to become Senior Air Staff Officer at Bomber Command HQ before, in March 1944, becoming attached to the D-Day planning team in which he played a key role.

  His successor at Bawtry was Air Vice Marshal Edward Rice, the man who was to lead 1 Group through the toughest period of the bomber war and by the time he handed over control in February 1945 the squadrons under his command had been forged into one of the most powerful bomber units in the world.

  Rice was very much an airman’s airman. He had joined the RFC as a pilot in 1915 and had served with distinction in France, first with 55 Squadron and then as a flight commander with 31 and 114 Squadrons before being given command of 97 Squadron in 1917 and 106 Squadron in the following May, by which time he had become a squadron leader in the new Royal Air Force. He ended the war in charge of 108 Squadron and later commanded 6 Squadron in Mesopotamia. Like many fellow officers Rice found himself surplus to requirements in the inter-war years before being brought back to run the RAF’s 4 School of Technical Training. In September 1941 he was appointed as head of the RAF in West Africa, spending 18 months there before his appointment as AOC of 1 Group in February 1943. He ended the war commanding 7 (Operational Training) Group which was to include three former 1 Group units.

  AVM Rice, a popular leader of 1 Group. (Grimsby Telegraph)

  Edward Rice did not come from the same mould as many of the RAF’s charismatic leaders but he was a man whose attention to detail and sheer determination to do the best for both the RAF and the men under his command won him widespread respect. It was Rice who was the driving force behind the innovative Rose rear turret which was fitted to 1 Group Lancasters in the later stages of the war, giving the aircraft much greater protection from German night fighters.

  Air Commodore ‘Hoppy’ Wray, the base commander at Binbrook for much of the war, talks to aircrew after a raid. Wray himself often flew with his men, both officially and unofficially. (Author’s collection)

  Rice was to prove an able and popular leader of 1 Group. He may have lacked the charisma of one or two of his contemporaries, but he was viewed as a man who would do his utmost to ensure the well-being of those who served under him. His popularity amongst air crews reached new heights in the autumn of 1944 when the Air Ministry decided to change the method of assessing the length of operational tours. In 1943 this had been fixed at 30 operations, a figure which relatively few were to live to achieve that year and during the spring of 1944. Things began to change following the Normandy invasion. Many operations were relatively short – support for military operations, attacks on French and Belgian rail targets, raids on flying bomb sites – and this meant tours which once took months to complete could now be over in a matter of weeks. Survival rates shot up but, at the same time, it meant the need for replacement crews increased substantially. The Air Ministry decided these ‘soft targets’ should actually only account for a third of an operational, meaning that potentially a bomber crew could have to fly on 90 raids before they were stood down.

  Hugh Constantine, who was CO at Elsham when the station opened. He had previously commanded 214 Squadron and was a man held in high esteem by all those who served under him. He later became Senior Air Staff Officer at 1 Group HQ before a posting to Bomber Command headquarters. In 1945 he became Air Officer Commanding 5 Group and was to be knighted before his retirement from the RAF in 1964. (Elsham Wolds Association)

  Rice was furious. He wrote to Harris that his crews were resentful and that the move could have a ‘serio
us effect on morale’. He said that experienced bomber crews had always been prepared to take the rough with the smooth but this move was simply pushing them too far. ‘They see the prospect of having to complete 90 raids during their tour and feel their likelihood of survival is slender,’ he said, urging that the plan should be dropped immediately. Harris agreed and cancelled the order with immediate effect. Rice had won an important and life-saving battle for many of his men.

  His successor and the final wartime AOC was Air Vice Marshal ‘Bobby’ Blucke, one of the outstanding men to serve with 1 Group in the war.

  Robert Stewart Blucke had joined the Dorset Regiment as a second lieutenant in January 1915 and for a short period in the late spring of 1917 was acting commanding officer. Blucke joined the fledgling RAF in the spring of 1918 and served as an observer with 63 Squadron. The end of the war saw him transferred to the ‘unemployed list’ before he was recalled for pilot training, serving with 29 Squadron. He spent seven years in India before returning to Britain and a posting to RAE Farnborough where he was able to put to good use his fascination with the new world of electronics. It was Bobby Blucke who flew the Heyford bomber used in the first radar trials in 1935 and by 1940 he was in charge of the RAF’s Blind Approach Training and Development Unit, which was to play a key role in the training of bomber pilots. He had a spell as officer commanding the Wireless Investigation Development Unit, helping produce counter measures for the Luftwaffe’s Knickebein transmitters, which had been used so effectively for bombing operations over Britain in the early war years.

  In 1942 came his first appointment within 1 Group as officer commanding Holme-on-Spalding Moor, one of the handful of airfields in East Yorkshire used by the group as a stop-gap until its new airfields in Lincolnshire were ready. The squadron at Holme was 101, which was in the process of converting to Lancasters, and it was to be the start of a long association between it and Bobby Blucke.

  He was no desk-bound airman and flew whenever possible with the squadron, winning a DSO in September 1943 in a raid on Mannheim.

  1 Group’s final wartime leader Air Vice Marshal Blucke pictured in 1943 during his time as Base Commander at Ludford Magna. (Vic Redfern)

  When 101 crossed the Humber to Ludford Magna Blucke went with them as AOC 14 Base, which took in the airfields and squadrons at Ludford, Wickenby and Faldingworth. It was at Ludford that his technical expertise came to the fore, the squadron being chosen as the first electronic counter measures squadron in Bomber Command and the airfield one of the first to be equipped with FIDO, the fog dispersal system which at first terrified many pilots faced with the task of landing between two strips of blazing petrol. Again it was Blucke leading from the front, showing crews just how to do it as he made a series of landings in the station’s Airspeed Oxford.

  101’s role as an ECM squadron meant relentless pressure and led to high casualties but once more Blucke led from the front, flying frequently on operations despite strictures from Bomber Command.

  In February 1945 he was ‘Bomber’ Harris’s choice to take over as AOC of 1 Group and was to remain in charge until 1947. He later served as AOC of Transport Command before retiring in 1952 and died in 1988 at the age of 91, the last wartime leader of 1 Group and one of its most distinguished airmen.

  Station commanders were sometimes left to pick up the pieces as this dramatic photograph from March 1945 shows. In the foreground is G/Capt Terrence Arbuthnot, the popular CO at Fiskerton, recovering .303 ammunition from the wreckage of a 1668 HCU Lancaster. It was on a cross-country exercise from Bottesford in neighbouring 5 Group when the pilot tried to make an emergency landing at Fiskerton, swung off the runway, crashed and caught fire. Two of the crew were badly injured. (Martin Nichol/David Briggs collection)

  Chapter 3

  Enter the Wellington

  Start of the Onslaught:

  Winter 1940 – Winter 1941

  On October 1, 1940 103 and 150 Squadrons heard the news all air crew at Newton had been waiting for – they were to re-equip with Vickers Wellingtons. On the same day similar orders went out to 300 and 301 Squadrons at Swinderby and to 304 and 305 Squadrons, whose aircrew were still in the midst of their Battle training, to prepare for conversion to Wellingtons.

  At Binbrook, however, it was not until mid-November that similar orders came through. Wellington production had still not reached its peak but the object was to have all eight squadrons fully converted and operational for the start of 1941. Six of the squadrons were ready but the appalling winter of 1940 and the unserviceability of Binbrook’s grass runways meant the two squadrons there had to wait until the spring of 1941 to make their Wellington debuts.

  The Wellington was by no means a new aircraft. It had its origins in an Air Ministry specification of 1932 for a twin-engined heavy bomber capable of carrying 2,000lbs of bombs as far as Berlin. The first Wellington prototype flew in 1936 and it quickly proved itself to be easily the best British bomber of its day. Designed largely by Barnes Wallis, it was of a novel geodetic design, a lightweight grid-pattern covered with a fabric skin, which was both flexible (so much so that many wartime crews swore that no two Wellingtons were exactly the same shape) and strong.

  The Mk I version, with which most 1 Group squadrons were first equipped, was good to fly, had an operating ceiling of 18,000ft (better than the early versions of both the four-engined Stirling and Halifax), a range of 1,540 miles and could carry 4,500lb of bombs. It had power-operated turrets, a crew of six and, operationally, was to considerably outlive its Bomber Command contemporaries, the Whitley and Hampden, finally being withdrawn from Bomber Command front line duties with 300 Squadron in the autumn of 1943. The early Mk Is delivered to 1 Group were powered by Bristol Pegasus engines while the later Mk IIs had Rolls-Royce Merlins. The Mk III had up-rated Bristol Hercules engines while the Mk IV was fitted with American-built Pratt and Whitney Wasps, part of the original specification for a batch of Wellingtons due to be delivered to the French Air Force in late 1940.

  The crew of 12 Squadron’s Wellington II PH-H W5419 pictured at Binbrook in the late spring of 1941. They are (left to right) wireless operator Sgt Philip ‘Con’ Ferebee, rear gunner Sgt Ted ‘Jock’ Porter, pilot F/Lt Bill Baxter (whose second name was, interestingly ‘Bethune’) navigator F/Sgt Glyn Mansal, front gunner Sgt Bryan Crocker, bomb aimer Sgt Bob Godfrey. The aircraft and crew with a different bomb aimer, was lost early in July, crashing in the sea after an attack on Bremen. (Wickenby Archive)

  The ‘Wimpey’ (a nick-name derived from the Popeye character J. Wellington-Wimpey) was the most numerous of all British wartime bombers, some 11,461 serving with no fewer than 45 different squadrons as well as the majority of Bomber Command’s Operational Training Units, in the Middle East and in Coastal Command. Almost 1,400 were lost on operations, over 570 of them with 1 Group.

  The first impact the Wellington had on 1 Group squadrons was on personnel, the new aircraft requiring a crew of six compared with the Battle’s three. The Wellington carried a pilot, second pilot, navigator, wireless operator/air gunner, front gunner and rear gunner and this meant a big influx of new faces from OTUs. These were the days before the ‘crewing-up’ system of later years had evolved and it was up to aircraft captains to select their own men. It may have seemed haphazard but it worked well and within days the new crews were airborne as training grew in intensity.

  At Newton the first Wellington arrived on October 2, 1940 and subsequent days saw further deliveries of more factory-fresh aircraft. The squadrons were instructed to withdraw two Battles for each new Wellington and by October 10 all the Battles had gone, either flown to maintenance units (many were sent to Canada where they were used in the Empire aircrew training scheme) or awaiting disposal.

  It was a similar story with the Polish squadrons but 12 and 142 Squadrons at Binbrook had to wait another month for their first aircraft, with deliveries of new aircraft there continuing into December. Experienced Wellington pilots were posted in to Binbrook to hel
p with the conversion. Among them was Sgt Handley Rogers who arrived from 149 Squadron at Mildenhall and was at the controls of Binbrook’s very first Wimpey when it made a 30-minute test flight on November 14. Among the men he gave dual control to in those first few days was 12 Squadron’s CO, W/Cmdr Vivian Blackden, along with S/Ldr Lowe and P/O Atkinson.

  With both air and ground crews new to the Wellington and the prevailing weather conditions, it was a wonder there were fewer mishaps than there were. Sgt Rogers was flying with P/O Bilton’s crew when their 142 Squadron Wellington crashed on take off following an engine failure. Three men, including Sgt Rogers, were injured. Sgt Rex Wheeldon managed to land a 12 Squadron Wellington in a field at Hawerby Hall, a few miles from the airfield, after thick fog descended on the airfield. Repairs, including an engine change – no mean feat in the middle of a Lincolnshire field - had to be carried out the following day before the aircraft was successfully flown back to Binbrook. Six months later this same Wellington was to be destroyed in a ground fire while it was being refuelled. At Newton another Wellington was badly damaged trying to land in fog while both aircraft were wrecked when a 150 Squadron Wellington landed across the flare path during night training and hit a 103 Squadron machine, which itself had made a heavy landing 25 minutes earlier.