The 1 Group aircraft taking part in the Caen operation began returning to their airfields around 7am. By 11pm that night many of them and their crews were in the air again as the second operation within 24 hours was mounted, this time to the synthetic oil plants at Schloven-Buer in Gelsenkirchen and Wesseling near Cologne. Ground crews put in an enormous amount of work to make this possible. Some aircraft returned from Caen with battle damage or technical problems which could not be rectified in such a short space of time but, nonetheless, it was a very impressive effort. At Elsham, for instance, 103 Squadron provided 15 aircraft for the first attack and 12 for the second, 576 sending 16 Lancasters to Caen and 14 to Schloven-Buer. All returned safely. 1 Group was to lose four aircraft on the Schloven-Buer attack while a fifth from 550 Squadron was badly damaged by flak on the return and six of the crew managed to bail out over Norfolk. The pilot, Canadian F/O Hollis Clark, tried to land the Lancaster but it crashed and he was killed. Of the other four lost, only one man survived, the navigator of a 460 Squadron aircraft. Fourteen men from 100 Squadron were killed along with another eight from 300 at Faldingworth.
The following day attacks were mounted on flying bomb sites by day and the railway yards at Courtrai in Belgium and the synthetic oil plant at Homberg, near Kaiserlauten by night. Both proved costly for 1 Group. 101 provided ABC support for the Homberg operation and lost two Lancasters, both to night fighters. F/O Jack Harvey was killed along with his crew while P/O David Meier was one of only two survivors from his. Twenty-one Lancasters and a Mosquito were lost in this attack, seven of them from a single 3 Group squadron, 75, which was based at Mepal in Cambridgeshire. 1 Group was to lose five aircraft in the Courtai attack, all to flak gunners. Three were lost from Wickenby, P/O Norman Hagerty and his crew from 12 Squadron and two from 626, F/O Bill Wilson and crew and the aircraft of F/O Jack Bowen. Five of this crew, which included six Australians, evaded capture while a sixth, the rear gunner F/Sgt Jack Houseman, was killed. Six more evaded from the only 460 Squadron Lancaster lost. Canadian navigator W/O Geoffrey Noble, was the only survivor from P/O Sydney Smith’s 101 Squadron crew but was very badly injured and was to spend most of his captivity in hospital. The other casualties of the night were F/O David Mills and three other members of his 100 Squadron crew. Low cloud again affected visibility at Waltham and his aircraft crashed after hitting a tree at Laceby Top, not far from the airfield, on its return. The crew were on their 23rd operation and their aircraft had been attacked by a night fighter and the mid-upper gunner, Sgt Wells, had been badly wounded.
Two nights later saw one of Bomber Command’s true ‘maximum effort’ nights with 629 aircraft devastating the port area at Kiel, another 119 attacking oil production targets, 116 bombing flying bomb sites and a further 180 aircraft involved in mine laying and diversionary operations. 1 Group’s contribution was to the attack on Kiel, the most successful of any on what had been one of Bomber Command’s first targets back in 1939. Only two aircraft failed to return, a 300 Squadron Lancaster and another from 625 at Kelstern. There were no survivors from either aircraft.
The city of Stuttgart was to be the next major target and it was hit three times in five nights as Bomber Command’s focus switched back, temporarily at least, to area bombing. Over those three nights 1,667 Lancasters and Halifaxes were to attack the city and 72 failed to return, a third of them from 1 Group. Worst affected was 103 Squadron at Elsham which lost six Lancasters, four of them in a single night.
The first raid took place on the night of July 24-25 when 1 Group lost six of the 21 aircraft which failed to return. Two came from 166 Squadron at Kirmington. P/O Gordon Heath’s aircraft was probably shot down by flak gunners as was the second, flown by American pilot F/O Bill Shearer. He was one of many young Americans who had crossed the border to join the Royal Canadian Air Force. After training as a pilot he was given the option of remaining in the RCAF or joining the United States Army Air Force. He chose the former and died on his ninth operation. Two aircraft were also lost from Faldingworth and all those on board were either British or Canadians, one all British crew surviving to become prisoners while three of the four Canadians in the second initially evaded capture only to surrender in need of treatment for their injuries. An American pilot also died in a 576 Squadron aircraft lost on the same raid, F/O Bob Sarvis failing to get out of his damaged aircraft when it was abandoned over Normandy. By some cruel irony, it was later determined it was US Army flak gunners who were responsible. Another aircraft lost was E-Easy of 103 Squadron. It was hit by flak near the target and set on fire. The hydraulics were damaged which meant the crew were unable to jettison the bomb load. Losing height, the Lancaster made it back as far as Orleans before the skipper, F/Sgt John Shean, ordered his crew to jump. Four managed to get out but hit the ground before their parachutes could deploy. Two more were killed when the aircraft crash-landed, only the pilot surviving. Despite suffering a broken leg, he managed to get clear of the aircraft and was quickly found by German soldiers. The rear gunner in the Lancaster was Sgt Jack Smith, a Lincolnshire lad who was five days short of his 20th birthday.
The bombers went back to Stuttgart again the following night when losses dropped to just 12 of the 412 aircraft taking part, two of them from 166 Squadron. F/O Bernard Singleton and his crew were killed but all seven men on board P/O John Cann’s Lancaster survived and evaded capture. The crew were on their 29th operation and were attacked by a Fw190 and bailed out over France. Six were quickly found by elements of the French Resistance and the SAS and were later joined by their Canadian navigator, W/O Nik Zuk. Six weeks later they were all back in England, praising the ‘extraordinary French people’ who helped them. Two Polish aircrew members also evaded capture from a 300 Squadron Lancaster which collided with an American aircraft over France. 1 Group’s other losses came from 100 and 103 Squadrons.
The final attack on Stuttgart on July 28-29 resulted in the heaviest losses, 39 of the attacking force of 494 being shot down, most falling to night fighters helped by bright moonlit conditions as the bombers left the target area. This was the night Elsham Wolds was to suffer with a quarter of the Lancasters sent by 103 and 576 Squadrons being shot down. Each squadron lost four aircraft with a fifth from 103 crash-landing back in England and 103’s historian wrote of ‘many empty dispersals around the airfield, many empty places in the messes and many sad faces’ the following day. Three full crews were killed in the Elsham aircraft although four men survived from F/O Bob Armstrong’s Lancaster along with all those on board the fifth aircraft which crashed-landed at Little Horwood in Buckinghamshire. 576 suffered marginally fewer casualties with only one full crew, that of F/Lt Howard Smith, being killed. Six more became prisoners and another, New Zealander F/O John Archibald, eventually making it back to Allied lines after his aircraft came down near the French-German border. Three were also lost from Wickenby. F/Sgt George Ryan and his crew were on their first operation when they were shot down by a night fighter near Stuttgart, only the navigator surviving. All 14 men on the two 12 Squadron aircraft lost were killed with the squadron’s gunnery leader, F/Lt Ian Saunders DFC, being among the casualties in F/O James Downing’s aircraft. There was better luck for the men on board two 625 Squadron Lancasters shot down with 10 surviving, three from the aircraft of P/O Harry Tuck DFC and all on the second Lancaster lost, flown by F/O Frank Collett.
The Rose turret in service. This photograph shows just how much room the rear gunner had. (Dick Preston)
Many 1 Group Lancasters were soon to be flying with much improved defences including Village Inn automatic gun-laying equipment which involved a parabolic scanning aerial being mounted in a dome underneath the rear turret. When another aircraft was picked up information was fed through a transmitter/receiver mounted in the navigator’s compartment directly to the gun sight in the rear turret.
The first squadrons to receive the equipment were 101 and 460 in 1 Group and flight engineer Sgt John Andrew, who flew from Binbrook, was later to recall that his
crew was selected to go to the Bomber Development Unit at Newmarket for initial training. When they returned to Binbrook they were taken off operations until they had trained the remainder of the crew on the use of Village Inn. Like many other innovations it was good in theory but limited when used operationally. Many crews found that when it was activated while they were flying in a bomber stream it was picking up ‘targets’ constantly while George Toombs, who also flew with 460, found another problem. ‘It was activated by two lights mounted in the dome over which was an infra-red covering. We were on ops one night in very bad weather and the coverings started peeling off. It was amazing, you could see all these aircraft flying along with what looked like car headlights behind them.’ It was not surprising that crews very quickly learned to turn Village Inn off at the earlier opportunity.
A 150 Squadron crew pictured around the Rose turret of their Lancaster, Hemswell, late 1944. Note the space afforded to the rear gunner. (Author’s collection)
The second innovation was the Rose rear turret, which was somewhat larger than the standard-fit Frazer-Nash turrets the production-line Lancasters came with and was equipped with twin .5 Browning machine guns which packed a far heavier punch than the normal complement of four .303s. It was an innovation planned and built in Lincolnshire and was to give the Lancasters of several 1 and 5 Group squadrons far better protection against German night fighters.
Air Chief Marshal Harris had served as a station commander at Hemswell before the war and later as AOC 5 Group and during his time in Lincolnshire got to know well a Gainsborough industrialist Alfred Rose, who lived at Fillingham Castle not far from Hemswell. Rose Brothers produced packaging machinery to a very high standard and had a highly skilled workforce. Earlier in the war Harris was very concerned about the poor defensive armament on the Hampdens of 5 Group and asked Alfred Rose if his company could help. Two weeks later drawings had been produced for a twin mounting in the aircraft’s dorsal turret, effectively doubling its fire power. Within a few weeks production was under way and the first Hampdens fitted with the improved design. Harris was very impressed and the company later provided mechanical adaptations for Lancasters and were heavily involved in the work to adapt 617 Squadron’s Lancasters to carry their dam-busting bouncing bombs. After the dams raid W/Cmdr Guy Gibson, wearing his newly-awarded Victoria Cross, led a contingent from the squadron to the Gainsborough factory to thank Rose Brothers’ engineers for their work.
There are conflicting stories about how the idea of the new rear turret was conceived. One is that it was Harris himself who was the driving force behind the idea, another that it was it was the AOC of 1 Group, AVM Rice, who helped Rose Brothers come up with a design which won Air Ministry approval in late 1943 (some records refer to it as the ‘Rose-Rice’ turret). Early prototypes were built and tested in the Gainsborough factory but ran into problems with vibration. These were overcome and by June 1944 the first 10 production turrets were ready and were taken by road to Hemswell, then being used by 1 Lancaster Finishing School. One of the airfield’s large pre-war hangars was set aside as a fitting shop and the first aircraft to receive them, Lancasters of 101 Squadron, were flown in from Ludford. The work was carried out by Rose Brothers engineers and RAF mechanics and within a few weeks 10 aircraft had been adapted, mostly by men from Ludford’s Base Major Servicing Section. Len Brooks, who was nearing the end of his tour as a rear gunner at Ludford, was one of the first to get to use the new turret and was in the turret when his aircraft was air tested after the modification work. ‘I was told to just sit there and not touch anything,’ he said. But it was immediately obvious to him how much of an improvement the new turret was. It was far larger which meant that for the first time a Lancaster rear gunner could wear his parachute rather than leave it back in the fuselage. The twin .5s were down by the gunner’s knees giving him vastly improved visibility. There was no Perspex panel in front of the gunner and there was so much room that the more enterprising and daring among them could actually lean out and look underneath the aircraft, a blind spot which was often exploited by night fighters. It also gave them a much greater chance of escape should they be forced to bail out. Tail gunners had long since learned to remove the Perspex panels from the old Frazer-Nash turrets, even though it meant the blast of the slipstream being sucked in. The design of the Rose turret was such that the effect of the slipstream was considerably lessened. John Faulkner, who flew in a Rose turret-equipped 166 Squadron Lancaster, said that while the new guns lacked the density of fire of the .303s, they had much greater range and hitting power. His turret was changed mid-way through his tour at Kirmington and he was convinced that many lives could have been saved had they been introduced earlier.
Brothers-in-arms. The three Henry brothers, John, Gaven and David, who flew as pilots with 103 Squadron at Elsham in 1944. At Elsham they were simply known as Mk I, Mk II and Mk III and special permission was given for them to fly on the same operation, to Cologne in October 1944. They hailed from New South Wales in Australia and John joined 103 in July 1944and was to win a DFC and was followed in the early autumn by his two younger brothers. A fourth brother, Ron, served on the ground crew with a flying boat squadron. All survived the war. (Elsham Wolds Association)
Rose Brothers eventually produced some 400 turrets and their design was so successful that Frazer-Nash later produced their own version, the FN82, which was fitted to later versions of the Lancaster. In a letter to Alfred Rose after the war, Harris wrote to commend the company on its ‘beautifully designed’ turret and added: ‘It was the only turret from which gunners can escape with any real chance of getting away with it. We have had several Rose turret occupants back as the sole survivors of their crew.’
The civilian population in Lincolnshire had long grown used to the sounds of bombers taking off and of their later return. That summer they also go used to actually seeing the bombers leave and return from their daylight raids. It could be a trying time for those with sons serving in Bomber Command. Doug Greenacre, an air gunner in P/O Bill Kuyser’s crew at Kirmington, remembered his mother telling him that she always counted the number of aircraft taking off from Waltham, close to her home in Grimsby, and staying awake to count the bombers back in again.
Early August was to bring more attacks on flying bomb storage sites with three 1 Group aircraft failing to return from an attack on Trossy-St-Maxim, one each from 166, 460 and 625 Squadrons, all falling to flak. Two daylight raids were also mounted on an oil storage depot at Pauillac near Bordeaux. The only aircraft lost was AS-J2 from 166 Squadron which collided with another Lancaster from the squadron soon after take-off. Both aircraft were flying over the North Sea at 450ft when the collision occurred, the tail section of F/Lt Walter Holman’s Lancaster being chopped off. There were no survivors. The second aircraft, flown by P/O Strath, made it back to Kirmington with a badly damaged wing.
The battle for Normandy was coming to a close and a final attack was made in support on ground troops on August 14 when a force of 805 heavy bombers attacked German positions, a raid in which some British bombs fell amongst Canadian soldiers. The only two aircraft lost were both from 1 Group, F/Lt John Bartlett’s from 103 Squadron and F/Sgt John Hough and crew from 550 Squadron.
Two days earlier 1 Group had lost seven Lancasters in a raid on Brunswick, three of them from 101 Squadron. Canadian F/O George Atyeo and five of his crew survived in one but all 16 men on board the aircraft of F/Lts Len Tugwell and Neville Marwood-Tucker were killed. The other losses were from 100, 166, 625 and 626 Squadrons.
During the late morning of August 15 1 Group took part in a series of major raids on Luftwaffe night-fighter airfields in Belgium and Holland. Over 1,000 Bomber Command aircraft were part of an Anglo-American force of 2,000 bombers taking part in an operation which it was hoped to destroy much of the remaining night fighter force. Only three aircraft were lost, none from 1 Group, but everyone who took part knew why it had been planned. Bomber Command was going back to Germany.
Chapter 17
The Highest Degree of Courage
Conspicuous Gallantry in
1 Group
Courage took many forms in wartime Bomber Command. There were those who extinguished flames inside a crippled bomber with their bare hands, one who climbed out onto the wing of an aircraft to use a fire extinguisher. There were those who, despite wounds inflicted by flak or fighter, pressed on to the target, others who led their squadron on daring raids which captured the public imagination.
There were those who needed monumental courage to simply climb into their Wellington or Lancaster and face another seven hours of absolute fear knowing full well they would have to go through it all again ten or twenty times before they could step down from operations. That was a special kind of courage indeed.
And then there were men like George Ashplant, whose instinctive courage and skill were enough to make even the King gasp in admiration but not, sadly, enough to win him his country’s highest honour for bravery.
Shortly after 17.45 on the evening of February 13, 1943 F/Sgt George Ashplant lifted Wellington BK460 AS-V off the main runway at Kirmington and began climbing through cloud to join the other 13 aircraft from the squadron assigned to a force of 466 bombers to attack Lorient. It was to be the heaviest attack of the war on the port, one of the major Atlantic coast bases for Germany’s U-boats. The attack was later deemed to be a success with over 1,000-tons of bombs dropped and major damage done. RAF losses were light, just six aircraft being lost on the raid. Two more crashed while landing, another hit barrage balloon cables off Plymouth while two more collided on their return. One of those was the Wellington flown by George Ashplant and his actions after the collision were to astonish everyone who learnt of them, including King George V1.
1 Group Page 24
