1 Group

by Patrick Otter

  A and B Flights with one of 103 Squadron’s Wellingtons pose for this picture taken during the winter of 1941. (Holford family rrecords)

  Another Wellington which failed to return to North Lincolnshire during August was QT-A of 142 Squadron, flown by F/Lt Gosman. His aircraft was caught in the beam of a master searchlight over Berlin and badly damaged by flak. Twenty minutes after leaving the target area the port engine began to overheat and had to be shut down. Despite the efforts of the crew to lighten the aircraft, the Wellington began to lose height steadily and finally Gosman gave the order to bail out. All six men escaped by parachute including the navigator F/Lt Durham and the wireless operator, Sgt Frith, both of whom had flown with Gosman in Battles in France, and were to spend the next few years ‘in the bag’.

  Poles line up their Wellington for a staged photograph at Hemswell in the summer of 1941. (Grimsby Telegraph)

  Two nights later Binbrook lost another Wellington following a raid on Rotterdam. A Luftwaffe Ju88 followed bombers back from the Belgian coast and attacked Sgt Cameron’s aircraft over the Humber on its return. Two of the crew, Sgts Alan Wakeford and Ken Harrison, were killed virtually within sight of 12 Squadron’s airfield.

  At Snaith 150 Squadron lost five Wellingtons within a month of beginning operations from the Yorkshire airfield, including one aircraft which crashed near Edale in the Peak District after turning back with engine problems from an attack on Hamburg. Two of the losses came on a single night during an attack on Hanover. One 150 crew had two fortunate escapes within a short period in September 1941. On the night of the 2-3 Sgt Dickenson’s crew left Snaith for at attack on Frankfurt but, less than half an hour later, the starboard propeller fell off their aircraft, Dickenson making an emergency landing at Kenley. Later in the month the same crew were returning from an attack on Berlin when their aircraft hit one of the barrage balloons guarding the Humber Estuary, the cable shearing off a propeller (this time the port one) and the Wellington crash landed on a sandbank not far from Spurn Point.

  The first Australian bomber squadron to serve with Bomber Command was within 1 Group late in the summer of 1941. 458 (RAAF) Squadron was the first unit to use the new airfield at Holme-on-Spalding Moor, not far from Market Weighton in East Yorkshire. Led by W/Cmdr Norman Mulholland DFC, the squadron was to operate only briefly with 1 Group, sending 10 Wellingtons to Antwerp on the night of October 22-23, one aircraft failing to return. Five of those on board were British and the sixth, the second pilot, Sgt Peter Crittenden, was the first Australian to die flying with an RAAF unit in Bomber Command. 458 lost just three aircraft in a handful of operations before it was transferred to Malta early in February, 1942. During the transfer W/Cmdr Mulholland’s aircraft crashed in the sea and his body was later recovered and buried in Sicily. (There appears to be some confusion as to whether 485 Squadron was attached to 1 or 4 Groups during its brief time at Holme-on-Spalding Moor. Some accounts show it part of 4 Group but all Australian ones indicate it definitely served with 1 Group. Additionally, Chris Blanchett, in his definitive 4 Group history, From Hull, Hell and Halifax, suggests 458 was never part of 4 Group).

  Night fighters were becoming an increasing hazard for the North Lincolnshire Wellingtons, so much so that 1 Group’s own Target Towing Flight was formed, initially being based at Goxhill (an airfield built for Bomber Command only for its approach from the north-east to be compromised by the balloon barrage in the Humber protecting the docks at Hull) before moving to Binbrook in November to replace 142 Squadron which moved to the new airfield at Waltham. The TTF initially used single-engined Lysanders to tow drogues but later used a collection of well-used Whitleys and Wellingtons in the towing role.

  The TTF was intended to improve the quality of defensive gunnery within 1 Group as the threat from the Luftwaffe’s growing night fighter force grew substantially as summer slipped into autumn in 1941. Flak and bad weather were the other main enemies of the Wellington crews and all three were to take their toll over the weeks and months to come. On the night of September 20-21 103 Squadron lost all four of the aircraft it contributed to a small-scale raid on Frankfurt. Shortly after take-off all the aircraft on this raid and a somewhat larger attack on Berlin (for which 103 provided another five aircraft) were recalled because of bad weather conditions but many of the crews did not pick up the message. One of the aircraft from 103 crashed near Holbeach trying to land in fog, another came down in Holland, a third was shot down over Germany and the fourth, low on fuel, was diverted to Linton-on-Ouse in Yorkshire but the pilot, P/O Ken Wallis, made an abortive attempt to land at Binbrook before both engines cut and he ordered the crew to bail out. Wallis himself finally got out when the stricken Wellington was less than 700ft above the ground and, during his brief descent, he was almost hit by his own aircraft as it came down virtually intact in a potato field near Market Rasen. All six crew members were picked up shortly afterwards from a pub in Caistor by 103’s new CO, W/Cmdr Ryan. Although Wallis’s crew escaped unscathed, that night cost 103 13 lives along with another man seriously injured and four men prisoners of war. The colourful Wallis himself survived the war and went on, among others things, to become a stunt pilot in the early James Bond films.

  Another 103 crew had a fortunate escape when an engine on their Wellington caught fire soon after leaving Duisburg. P/O ‘Taffy’ Jones cut the power and used the graviner switch to extinguish the flames. The propeller continued to windmill until it finally flew off, hitting the fuselage, according to navigator Alan Mills, with a ‘terrific clatter’. Losing height gradually, they managed to get across the North Sea, just missing the balloon barrage at Harwich, and headed for the Canadian fighter airfield at Martlesham Heath. Just as the pilot was trying to line the Wellington up for a landing the starboard engine misfired and died and he made a wheels-up landing on the edge of the airfield. The Wellington burst into flames immediately and five of the crew scrambled out but the rear gunner, Sgt Jack Edwards, was trapped. They had come down outside the ring of barbed wire which surrounded the airfield (a legacy of the invasion scare of 1940) and the station fire tender couldn’t get to them. However, the aircraft had come down almost on top of an anti-aircraft gun site and the gun crew sergeant grabbed hold of the twin Brownings and gave an almighty tug, managing to pull the entire turret clear of the flames, which were then just three feet away, freeing Sgt Edwards.

  At Binbrook 12 Squadron lost two flight commanders in a single night, S/Ldr Peter Edinger, who was killed along with four of his crew, and S/Ldr Fielden, whose entire crew became prisoners. The squadron lost two Wellingtons in an attack on Cologne the following month, one crashing in Holland with four of the crew being killed, while the second aircraft, which had turned back probably because of mechanical problems, crash-landed on the beach at Caister-on-Sea in Norfolk in the dark and tragically hit one of the anti-invasion mines and exploded, killing Sgt Frank Tothill and his crew.

  Another tragedy for 12 Squadron occurred nearer home on the night of October 21 when Scotsman Sgt Jim Millar brought his Wellington back from Bremen unscathed only to hit one of the married quarters buildings at Binbrook as he attempted to land with only the rear gunner surviving the crash. A 142 Squadron aircraft failed to return from the same operation and is believed to have crashed in the sea off the Dutch coast.

  On November 5 142 was given orders to begin its move to Grimsby, the airfield everyone known simply as ‘Waltham’. It was a satellite of Binbrook and its concrete runways had been used by both 12 and 142 over the previous few weeks but now the move was to be permanent. As 142 moved out 12 Squadron stepped up a gear. More aircraft were delivered and more crews arrived and 12 was able to form a third flight and marked the month by topping the 1 Group bombing tables, dropping 55 tons of bombs during 31 sorties. It was just as well for the weather closed in at the end of November and, for the second winter in succession, flying was severely restricted at Binbrook.

  F/Lt Doug Gosman (standing, extreme right) and his crew and the ground
crew of Wellington QT-A of 142 Squadron pictured at Binbrook shortly before they were shot down on a Berlin raid in March 1941. All survived to spend the rest of the war behind wire. Les Frith, who flew Battles with Gosman in France, is pictured second from the left. (Brian Frith)

  An advance party had moved into Waltham from Binbrook to prepare the way for 142’s move. Among them was F/Sgt Alf Adams, a pre-war regular, who actually lived in Waltham village. He was a married man and when posted to Binbrook had found a house in Waltham and ‘commuted’ to Binbrook by bike – ‘an hour going and half an hour back downhill!’ – and was delighted to find himself in charge of the advance party for the squadron’s move to an airfield five minute’s walk from his house. He recalled trials being carried out on coating the main runway with wood chippings to help damaged aircraft make safer wheels-up landings. Unfortunately, the runway wasn’t long enough but the system was later used at the emergency airfield at Carnaby, near Bridlington. Waltham was also one of two 1 Group airfields (the other was Elsham) where arrester gear was first fitted to help prevent runway overshoots.

  A Wellington of 12 Squadron being bombed-up at Binbrook, 1941. (Peter Green Collection)

  1 Group’s Polish squadrons were in the thick of the action that autumn and were, like their RAF counterparts, suffering increasing losses. An attack on Mannheim on the night of November 7-8 resulted in three Wellingtons from Hemswell, two from 300 and the third from 301 Squadrons, failing to return although, remarkably, all 18 men on board survived, two evading capture and making it back to England. One of the men taken prisoner, F/O Kolanowski of 301 Squadron, was to be murdered by the Gestapo following the ‘Great Escape’ in March 1944. By one of those coincidences of war, another of those to be shot in the same incident was P/O Mondschein, the pilot of a 304 Squadron Wellington lost from Lindholme on the same raid. The Mannheim attack also resulted in the loss of a Wellington and their crews from each of 103 and 150 Squadrons.

  142’s operational debut from its new home at Waltham came on the night of November 30-December 1 when nine Wellingtons took part in a raid on Hamburg involving 181 aircraft from Bomber Command. One turned back after problems were reported with the rear turret and another dropped its bombs on the Luftwaffe coastal airfield at Westerland on the island of Sylt. Two more failed to return, Sgt Alex Gilmour’s Wellington going down in the Kiel area while 20-year-old Sgt Ken Barnfield’s Wellington is believed to have crashed in the sea. All 12 men on board the two aircraft were killed. On board the missing 103 Wellington was navigator Sgt Alan Mills, who had escaped the crash on the Duisburg raid. He was the regular navigator for S/Ldr Ian Cross’s crew but, when he wasn’t flying, was the ‘spare’ navigator. That night he had been due to fly with a new crew but their operation was cancelled and instead went to Mannheim with Sgt Eric Lawson’s crew. They were shot down near Nancy and he became something of a rarity at this stage of the war, an evader. He was interred for a while by the Vichy authorities but later managed to escape and made his way home via Gibraltar, arriving back in England 11 months after leaving Elsham. He later served with both Coastal and Transport Commands.

  Operations continued as the year drew to a close but, inevitably, were restricted by bad weather which made those airfields without concrete runways unserviceable for short periods. An attack on Ostend on the night of December 16-17 cost each of the Lindholme squadrons a Wellington, one from 304 going down in the North Sea with no survivors while a second from 305 crashed on its return, badly injuring four of those on board. A week later 305 lost another aircraft, the Wellington crashing near Northampton not long after it took off for an attack on Cologne. The six men on board were to be the last from 1 Group to lose their lives in 1941.

  The first full year of the bombing war had proved to be a tough one for the eight 1 Group squadrons. 1942 was to prove even tougher.

  Chapter 4

  Expansion

  The Great Airfield Building

  Programme

  When Britain declared war on September 3, 1939 there was just one operational bomber airfield in northern Lincolnshire, the area which was to become the home of 1 Group.

  In the early 1930s there was a growing realisation that if a new war was to break out in Europe it would be dominated by the strategic bomber and Britain was singularly lacking in airfields to accommodate such a force, let alone the aircraft with which to prosecute such a conflict. It was this realisation that was the catalyst behind the large-scale Expansion Scheme for airfield construction which got under way in 1935. This scheme called for a chain of airfields stretching up the eastern side of Britain from Suffolk to North Yorkshire which, the argument went, would provide bases for a force capable of striking as far as Berlin. It proved to be astonishingly prescient.

  QT-B of 142 Squadron pictured at Waltham in the winter of 1941-42. The aircraft crashed in the North Sea 70 miles east of Bridlington on the night of January 17-18, 1942 as it was returning from Bremen. No trace was ever found of the pilot, F/O Astley Pickett, and his crew. (Peter Green collection)

  Another victim of the 1,000-bomber raid on Cologne, PH-C of 12 Squadron was shot down by flak and there were no survivors from F/Lt Tony Payne’s crew. (Wickenby Archive)

  Conventional thinking has it that Britain sleep-walked into the Second World War and was hugely under-prepared for the events which were to unfold in May 1940 and that is largely correct. But in terms of airfield construction that was not quite the case, although history was to prove that airfield expansion probably started a year later than it should have.

  But by 1939 the first and second phases of the Expansion Scheme airfields were already operational and the third phase would be ready for use the following spring and summer.

  Those early airfields were (and still are today) something to behold. They were built in the main by master craftsman, working to exacting designs and specifications. They featured enormous brick-built hangars which, given the size of bomber aircraft available at the time and even those envisaged, displayed a remarkable level of forward thinking on behalf of the body responsible.

  The Air Ministry Works Directorate oversaw the planning and building of these early ‘aerodromes’ while the job of finding suitable airfield sites was the responsibility of the Air Ministry Aerodromes Board and the Air Ministry Lands Branch. Then, as now, they had to satisfy stringent conditions before work could begin. A standard architectural style was chosen and their work was monitored closely by the Society for the Preservation of Rural England and the Royal Fine Arts Commission. The new airfields were not only to be proficient, they were to be pleasing on the eye too. A joiner who worked on the Expansion airfield at Manby in Lincolnshire recalled that when he fitted doors they had to close to the thickness of the cardboard in a cigarette packet. Those who served on some of the wartime-built airfields were lucky if they had a door to close at all, so many being scrounged to feed Nissen hut stoves.

  Wellington pilots Sgts Bray and Spooner pictured at Elsham after nursing their badly damaged aircraft home after a serious fire. The remainder of their crew had bailed out but they got the fire under control and made it back to Lincolnshire. Both received DFMs for their efforts but both were later to be killed on operations. One of their crew members was later to be among the airmen shot during the Great Escape (Elsham Wolds Association)

  The first stage of the programme saw the building of just one airfield in Lincolnshire (the rebuilt Waddington) and Linton-on-Ouse in Yorkshire, which, given the propensity of wartime airfields in both counties, seems somewhat strange looking back with the hindsight of history.

  The second stage, however, did include Hemswell and Scampton in Lincolnshire and Finningley, Lindholme, Driffield, Leconfield and Dishforth in Yorkshire and Newton in Nottinghamshire and they opened from 1937 onwards. The final stage resulted in the building of Binbrook, Coningsby and Swinderby in Lincolnshire, Syerston in Nottinghamshire and Leeming, Middleton St George and Topcliffe in Yorkshire. Syerston and Swinderby were to come into use i
n 1939 and Binbrook and Coningsby the following year. They were all to be very well built places, designed to the highest standard of the day and providing accommodation for all ranks that was much superior to anything which had gone before or, in most cases, which came after. They had everything, except, that is, hardened runways. This was to be the Achilles heel for Bomber Command in the early days of the war. Grass landing strips had been acceptable for the aircraft of the 1930s, including the twin-engined Wellingtons, Whitleys and Hampdens. But once the rigours of war were imposed, with bombers expected to carry their maximum permitted bomb load and to operate in all weathers, the cracks, or at least the mud, began to appear. One example of this was Binbrook, high on the Lincolnshire Wolds. Its two resident squadrons, 12 and 142, exchanged their Fairey Battles for Wellingtons in the autumn of 1940 but, because of a particularly bad winter and poor drainage (the airfield was built in something resembling a saucer on top of the Lincolnshire Wolds), were not able to operate from their own airfield until the following April.