However, early on the morning of February 12 all three ships left Brest on what was to become one of the Kriegsmarine’s most audacious operations of the war. In poor weather conditions the three warships headed into the Channel and it wasn’t until they had almost reached Calais that they were spotted by a patrolling Spitfire. The bad weather had led to most of Bomber Command being stood down for the day but, to its great credit, within two hours the RAF’s largest daylight operation of the war was under way with some 272 aircraft attempting to stop the warships. Only a few managed to catch a glimpse of the two capital ships known collectively to bomber crews as ‘Salmon and Gluck’ (the firm of Salmon and Gluck Stein had once supplied copious amounts of tobacco products to the British armed forces), and even fewer managed to attack them. Two aircraft that did were a pair of Wellingtons from 103 Squadron flown by flight commander S/Ldr Ian Cross and his deputy, F/Lt David Holford. They attacked the ships at low level somewhere off the Dutch coast, Holford making it back to Elsham where he reported seeing the second Wellington, with his close friend Ian Cross at the controls, crash into the sea. Holford was later awarded the DSO for his actions while S/Ldr Cross and three other members of his crew survived and were picked up by the Germans. Just over two years later Cross was one of the escapees from Sagan PoW camp in eastern Germany in the breakout which became known as the Great Escape, only to be recaptured and shot by the Gestapo. Three other aircraft had joined in the hunt from Elsham. One, flown by F/Sgt Kitney, did locate the warships but was unable to attack while the others turned back having found nothing.
The 103 Squadron Wellington was the only aircraft lost by 1 Group that afternoon but several others were badly damaged as they attempted to attack the warships at low level and by German fighters. F/Lt Frank Campling (his first name was ‘Eric’ but he much preferred his second, Frank) of 142 Squadron made it back to Waltham with part of his starboard wing shot away, his turrets out of action and a huge hole in the rear fuselage and he was awarded an immediate DFC for his actions. He had flown part of the way at wave-top height, weaving continually before throwing off two pursuing German fighters. Campling went on to become a flight commander with 460 Squadron at Binbrook, where he won a DSO and a reputation as one of the most careful pilots on the squadron. There he once organised a competition to see who could get the best miles-per-gallon out of a Lancaster. He invariably won (his best figure was 1.1mpg!) but it meant his Lancaster was always last back from operations, which tempered somewhat his popularity with those who flew with him. He was later promoted wing commander and was to die while flying a Lancaster on a training exercise while commanding No. 1 Lancaster Finishing School at Hemswell. He was just 23 years old.
In the meantime, Scharnhorst, Gneisenau and Prinz Eugen, escaped in what became known as ‘The Channel Dash’, although both the larger vessels were damaged by mines dropped by 5 Group Hampdens. It was something of a humiliation for the British and the RAF in particular as the Germans slipped right beneath their noses. However, the warships now posed no serious threat to the vital Atlantic convoys and it meant Bomber Command was free to focus on striking targets in Germany.
300 Squadron Wellingtons pictured at Hemswell, early 1943. (Peter Green Collection)
Harris had been doing his homework and it was time to put his theories into practice. He believed the way to beat the German defensive system was simply to overwhelm it – instead of bombers going singly through the defensive boxes they would go in waves, in streams that would simply be too great for the defenders to cope with. It was a simple idea and, like many simple ideas, it worked brilliantly, at least until counter measures were introduced.
After another series of raids on Kiel, where the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau had taken refuge and in which the latter was hit and effectively put out of action, the RAF bombed the Renault factory at Billancourt on the outskirts of Paris in what was perhaps Bomber Command’s most successful attack of the war so far. Two hundred and thirty-five bombers, flying in three waves, attacked from low level, the target being lit by flares in a raid that took less than two hours. Just one aircraft was lost and the factory, which was producing trucks for the German army, was out of action for over a month. The 1 Group crews were elated on their return. At Waltham F/Sgt Caldow reported bombing from little more than 1,500ft and seeing his bombs hit a gasometer and factory buildings.
The first wave of the attack at Billancourt had been led by some of Bomber Command’s most experienced crews and the flares they dropped help guide the remainder of the force to the target. This was, in fact, the birth of the ‘Pathfinders’ and marked the start of yet another chapter in the bombing war.
A wonderful photograph of 12 Squadron’s PH-C taken at sunset in February 1942. It was shot down over Denmark six hours after this photograph was taken. (Author’s collection)
The night of March 8-9 saw the start of a series of concerted raids over three nights on Essen. They were not in themselves successful but saw the wide scale introduction of Gee, the first of the great navigational leaps the wartime RAF was to make. It worked by a bomber’s navigator picking up pulse signals from at least two of a chain of Gee transmitting stations, enabling him to make a far more accurate fix on an aircraft’s position. Limited trials had been carried out over the previous few months but the Essen raid marked its introduction on main force raids. The following night Essen was attacked again and among the aircraft shot down was a Wellington flown by S/Ldr John Nicholls of 150 Squadron at Snaith who died along with his crew. 12 Squadron lost a Wellington and five men on the same night while another of ‘Shiny Twelve’s’ aircraft failed to return from the third Essen raid on March 9-10, the aircraft being hit by flak over Holland with the loss of three of those on board.
Early March saw the operational debut of 1 Group’s newest squadron, 460 of the Royal Australian Air Force, the second Australian unit in Bomber Command. It had been formed on November 1, 1941 at Molesworth and moved to the new airfield at Breighton, near Selby, Yorkshire in early January where it formally became part of 1 Group. Breighton was barely finished by the time the Australians moved in and was another of the stop-gap airfields to be used by 1 Group until its own bases in Lincolnshire were ready for occupation. 460 would spend almost 18 months there and lost no time in getting down to business. The squadron was led by W/Cmdr A. L. G. Hubbard, one of the most experienced Australians in the RAF, with S/Ldrs Colin Gilbert and A.D. Frank as his flight commanders. They were a formidable team and drove their men hard and, by early March, determined the squadron was ready for operations. They had already lost one Wellington and its crew in a training accident but, with Gilbert and Frank leading, five aircraft from Breighton took part in a small scale raid on Emden on March 12-13. All returned safely although the accuracy of their bombing left much to be desired with later reconnaissance photographs showing the nearest fell five miles from the intended target. That was not unusual in early 1942. 460’s first loss came a week later when one aircraft failed to return from an attack on Dunkirk with the loss of the entire crew, which comprised three Englishmen, two Australians and a New Zealander. Although officially an RAAF squadron and paid for by the Australian government, 460 was never to be entirely all-Australian. Their initial losses were heavy and there were some wild celebrations of the sort only the Australians could manage when later in the year two pilot officers, Bill Brill and Arthur Doubleday, became the first to finish tours of operations on the same day having previously served with other squadrons. The celebrations included sending buses to York hospital with instructions to the drivers to bring back as many nurses as possible!
There was little rest for the 1 Group crews. The Poles at Hemswell lost a Wellington and crew in a raid on Kiel while a 305 Squadron Wellington made it back from Cologne on the night of March 13-14 only to overshoot the runway at Lindholme, hit a building and burst into flames. Rescuers could only get to two of the men on board and one of those later died in hospital in Doncaster.
1 Group was back
over Essen on the night of March 26-27, two 12 Squadron aircraft falling to the guns of a single night fighter over Holland. One of the aircraft was being flown by the squadron CO, W/Cmdr Albert Golding. In the same raid the Poles at Hemswell lost three aircraft and their crews, night fighters claiming a Wellington each from 300 and 301 Squadrons over Holland while a second 301 aircraft fell to flak. Just one man from the 18 on board survived to become a prisoner, losses the Polish squadrons could ill afford with so few replacements available.
Raids deeper and deeper into Germany brought the Poles at Hemswell and Lindholme closer and closer to their homeland. Aircrew at Hemswell are reported to have shouted for joy when first told they would be attacking Berlin and when the first of a series of attacks on the Hanseatic port of Rostock one crew made a slight diversion to ensure they flew over Polish territory before heading back to Lincolnshire.
It was another of the old Hanseatic League cities which 1 Group visited on the night of March 28-29 in what was so far the most devastating attack of the war so far. It was a crystal clear night, defences were weak and the Gee-equipped aircraft in the first of three waves had no difficulty in locating their aiming point in the heart of the largely wooden city of Lübeck. One hundred and ninety aircraft, carrying a mixture of high explosive and incendiary bombs, hit the city centre and within a short period two-thirds of the city had been either destroyed or badly damaged. The raid was to cost 142 Squadron two aircraft while a third was lost from 305 Squadron at Lindholme. What happened to Lübeck was to lay down a marker for more devastating raids to come.
Continuing Wellington losses were putting an increasing strain on pilot training within Bomber Command. The aircraft had been designed to fly with a crew of six, including a second pilot, thus every loss meant that two pilots had to be replaced. At the end of March came the order from the Air Ministry that henceforth a Wellington crew would be made up of five men and aircraft would fly with a single pilot. It may have eased the strain on training but did little to lift the morale of crews.
In January 1942 a Wellington from 12 Squadron had been the first to carry and drop one of the new 4,000lb blast bombs and these weapons, usually carried in conjunction with containers of incendiary bombs, were causing increasing damage as area bombing began to leave its mark across Germany. The 4,000lb ‘cookies’, forerunners of even more destructive 8,000lb bombs, blew off roofs and opened the way for the incendiaries to get to work. It was a fearsome tactic, particularly when atmospheric conditions were right, and was to be later perfected over the cities of Hamburg and Dresden.
Essen was hit repeatedly during late spring and on the night of April 6-7 was again to be a target for Bomber Command. Among the squadrons taking part was 142 at Waltham. Alan Westwood drove a refuelling truck and had become friends with a particular pilot, 34-year-old F/Sgt Hayes, and was pleased when his pal completed his 30th operation and was screened from flying. However, his crew still had two more to go so that night volunteered to fly with them. ‘The crew pressed him to stick with them until they had finished. I told him he was a bloody fool. He’d done his stint and should stay behind. But he wouldn’t have it.’The Wellington never made it back to Waltham. It was hit by either flak or a fighter over Cologne, broke up and crashed on the outskirts of the city. There were no survivors.
The last of eight raids in five weeks on Essen on the night of April 12-13 cost Hemswell two more Wellingtons, one from 300 Squadron being shot down by a night fighter while a 301 Squadron aircraft force landed with battle damage in Norfolk, the crew escaping without injury. Some of the Poles seemed to have charmed lives. During the Rostock raid one aircraft from 301 Squadron had both engines damaged by flak and lost height rapidly. The pilot, F/O Nowacki, managed to regain control and, with no hope of making it back to England, headed across the Baltic before force landing in Sweden. He and his crew were repatriated the following year and were soon flying again. The following night another Hemswell Wellington, this time from 300, was shot down by a night fighter en route to Cologne. All the crew escaped by parachute and four of them managed to evade capture and made it back to England. The second pilot, P/O Wasik, had almost completed a second tour with 300 Squadron when he was shot down again. Once more he managed to escape to England and resumed flying.
In the meantime 300 had a new home, moving a few miles down the arrow-straight Ermine Street to Ingham, Hemswell’s small satellite airfield which had been opened two years earlier before being upgraded to take bombers, albeit on grass runways. The squadron was to spend much of the next two years there.
A series of inconclusive attacks on Stuttgart in early May proved expensive for 1 Group. 460 lost its first aircraft and crews over Germany when two aircraft failed to return. One of the six men who died was one of the flight commanders, Colin Gilbert. The same raid cost 150 Squadron three aircraft. One crashed on take off, the crew escaping injury, while a second went down in the North Sea with the loss of all six men on board. The third was flown by Sgt Robert Baxter, a 24-year-old Australian. The port engine of his Wellington was damaged by flak over France but he managed to nurse the aircraft back to England only for the engine to fail when they were not far from home. It was clear the aircraft wouldn’t make it back to Snaith and he opted for the nearest airfield, which happened to be Blyton. The airfield was still far from finished but had usable runways so Baxter brought his Wellington in to land. It was still dark and what he couldn’t see were the obstructions on the main runway left out by the contractors. The Wellington hit one of these and immediately burst into flames. Baxter and four of the other crew members got out through the pilot’s escape hatch but it was only when they were clear of the burning aircraft that they spotted their wireless operator, who had become trapped, trying to get through the lower hatch. By this time ammunition and flares were exploding but Sgt Baxter immediately went back into the Wellington and managed to drag the wireless operator from the lower hatch and got him out of the pilot’s escape hatch. He himself just got clear before the fuel tanks exploded, suffering extensive second degree burns to his hands and face.
P/O Ron Brooks and his Wellington crew of 142 Squadron at Waltham. Brooks was to win a DFC during a raid on Kassel. (D. Brooks)
For his actions Sgt Baxter was awarded the George Medal, the citation reading: ‘The unselfish heroism displayed by this airman undoubtedly saved the life of his comrade.’ But Robert Baxter did not live to receive his award from the King. On the day the award was announced, August 6, Sgt Baxter was one of a number of 150 Squadron crews selected for a raid on Duisburg. Shortly after his Wellington lifted off from Snaith at twenty-to-one the following morning the aircraft suddenly stalled and crashed into the ground, killing him along with four other members of his crew. He is now buried along side them in Selby cemetery.
As May wore on rumours began circulating airfields across North Lincolnshire and Yorkshire that ‘something big’ was about to happen. Quite how big no one could even guess.
The idea of sending 1,000 bombers to attack a single target, which would provide something of a propaganda coup for Bomber Command, emerged from discussions in April between Harris and his senior air staff officer and closest confidant AVM Robert Saundby. The main problem was that Bomber Command simply didn’t have 1,000 bombers at its disposal but, in his preliminary planning, Saundby reckoned that by using aircraft from Training Command and from Coastal Command, it might be just possible.
The idea had great attraction for Harris. Not only would it be a huge boost to morale in a command which, before his arrival, was facing possibly being disbanded, it would prove once and for all that Bomber Command could play a major role in determining the outcome of the war. Harris believed that a series of ‘knock-out blows’ could so undermine morale in Germany that they would hasten the end of the war. And this, Operation Millennium, was to be the first of them. To ensure success the raid would have to be accurate and that meant one within range of Gee, and the planners suggested the two best options were Hamburg an
d Cologne. The idea was approved with some enthusiasm by Churchill and it was established that conditions would be ideal over a five-night period beginning on May 27.
There was a major set-back to the plan when Coastal Command refused to release aircraft for the attack, retribution perhaps for Bomber Command’s reluctance to place some of its squadrons under Coastal’s control for its operations against marauding U-boats. But Saundby was determined to make up the shortfall and squadrons were told to prepare every available aircraft, including clapped out ‘hacks’ and as many of those undergoing repair as possible, for operational duties. It was a mammoth undertaking but it worked. Bomber Command was able to assemble 678 aircraft (up from an original estimate of 490) while 91 and 92 Training groups provided a further 365 and Flying Training Command chipped in with another four to make a grand total of 1,047, not far short of Saunby’s original estimate of 1,081. 1 Group’s contribution was to be 156 Wellingtons, the second highest figure in Bomber Command. The operational order for the raid was issued on May 26 but bad weather over Germany meant a postponement until the night of May 30-31. Weather conditions over Germany also determined that Cologne would be the target.
There was frantic activity on airfields throughout the east of England to get aircraft ready. Sid Finn, who was a ground crew member at Elsham Wolds and later became 103’s historian, later wrote of the ‘common talk in the workshops, hangars and NAAFI’ of a raid involving 1,000 aircraft. ‘Extra bods were brought in to complete modifications,’ he wrote, the modifications including the fitting of Gee equipment to the squadron’s Wellingtons. ‘We were trying to guess the target from the fuel and bomb loads… while some of the ground crews were working 24-hour shifts to get some of the old machines serviceable.’ Speculation grew even further when 11 Wellingtons from 22 Operational Training Unit at Wellsbourne Mountford in Warwickshire flew into Elsham to take part in the raid.
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