After leaving the air force, he became a journalist, the author of a best-selling autobiography before going into politics where he became Minister of Water Supply and Public Works in the Victorian Legislative Assembly. He died in 1989 at the age of 66.
The doctor who risked his life
Bravery, of course, was not restricted to air crew. Many of those who served on ground crew or staff risked their lives to save men trapped in burning aircraft.
Among them was Dr Geoffrey Dhenin who, in the summer of 1943, found himself at Kirmington as 166 Squadron Medical Officer. The MO was a vital cog in the machine that was a wartime bomber squadron. Apart from dealing with day-to-day ailments and injuries, it was his job to determine whether an airman was fit to fly, either after being wounded or, on occasion, getting the ‘shakes’. But he was to be faced with something far more daunting in the early hours of October 9, 1943.
Three hours earlier 13 of the squadron’s Lancasters had taken off for Stuttgart but one of them, AS-C flown by 21-year-old W/O Reg Rabett DFC, turned back when the port outer engine failed. As W/O Rabett was on his final approach into Kirmington shortly before 2am, the port inner failed as well, the aircraft going into an uncontrollable spin and crashing into the ground almost on the airfield boundary, broke in two and burst into flames. Five of the crew, including the pilot, were killed but gunners were trapped, Sgt Ted Croxon in the mid-upper and Sgt Les Davidson in the rear turret which itself had become wedged under part of the fuselage. Nearby was part of the bomb load.
F/O Dhenin was quickly on the scene in the station ambulance and, after helping free Sgt Croxon, set about trying to save the trapped rear gunner. His turret had been crushed under wreckage from the Lancaster and part of the bomb load was only a matter of feet away. Helped by Cpl Bill Rush, who had been manning one of the station’s anti-aircraft guns, he managed to crawl under the debris and spent half an hour trying to free Sgt Davidson. Finally, the station’s mobile crane arrived and managed to lift the wreckage sufficiently for F/O Dhenin to help drag the injured gunner clear.
For his bravery that night F/O Dhenin was awarded the George Medal while a BEM went to Cpl Rush. Dhenin himself went on to become the Deputy Principal Medical Officer (Flying) at Bomber Command HQ after the war, took part in the atom bomb trials in Australia in the early 1950s, was knighted for his work and finished his career as an air vice marshal. Both Sgt Davidson and Sgt Croxon, who he helped save that night, are believed to have survived the war.
Ablaze over Italy
Courage could also take a collective form and this was to be displayed on the night of February 14-15, 1943 when the crew of a 101 Squadron Lancaster won a DSO and no fewer than five Conspicuous Gallantry Medals between them.
Sgt Ivan Hazard and his crew were part of a force which attacked Milan, a long flight but a lightly-defended target, or so it was for most of the force of 142 bombers from 1, 5 and 8 Groups. Over the target area Sgt Hazard’s Lancaster was attacked by a single CR42 fighter, which raked the fuselage with cannon and machine-gun fire, igniting a canister of incendiary bombs which had ‘hung up’ in the bomb bay.
The fuselage became a mass of flames and quickly spread to the upper gun turret, exploding ammunition adding to the crew’s problems. Despite the inferno nearby, the gunner, F/Sgt George Dove, stuck to his position and, although suffering burns to his face and hands, opened fire on the attacking aircraft. The fighter had already been hit by a burst from the rear turret, which was manned by Sgt Les Airey, and disappeared in flames.
F/Sgt Dove then climbed down from his position and managed to get through the flames to the rear turret where he found Sgt Airey had been wounded in the attack. The pilot had already warned the crew to be ready to jump but, on learning of Sgt Airey’s injuries, he decided to attempt a force landing.
In the meantime, the wireless operator, P/O Fred Gates, the navigator, Sgt Bill Williams, and the flight engineer, Sgt Jim Bain, tackled the fire with the aircraft’s extinguishers and managed to bring it under control. By now the badly damaged Lancaster was down to 800 feet but, with the fire almost out, Sgt Hazard conferred with the rest of the crew and they decided to attempt to get home. They managed to regain sufficient height to cross the Alps but shortly after doing so one of the engines failed.
For the remainder of the journey home P/O Gates gave what help he could to the pilot and then climbed over the gaping hole in the fuselage to tend to the wounded rear gunner. With the flight engineer nursing the engines and the navigator keeping a careful check on their course, Sgt Hazard managed to get the Lancaster back to England where they made an emergency landing.
There was an immediate award of a DSO to P/O Gates, the only officer in the crew, and Conspicuous Gallantry Medals for F/Sgt Dove and Sgt Hazard, Williams, Bain and Airey, the highest number of awards for a single aircraft’s crew.
Only the two gunners, F/Sgt Dove, and Sgt Airey, would live to collect their medals. Sgt Hazard, Sgt Bain and Sgt Williams were all killed the following month when they crashed on the beach near Hornsea during an air test. P/O Gates survived them by only a few weeks, failing to return from an operation a few weeks later.
‘Johnny Garland Didn’t Come Back Last Night’
There were to be no gallantry medals for Johnny Garland. Simply a Portland stone headstone in the Berlin War Cemetery, one of 3,576 in the suburb of Charlottenburg, the vast majority of them the final resting place of men of RAF Bomber Command.
Johnny Garland was a teenager when he died, too young even for a serious girlfriend. He was a sergeant, a rear gunner in a Lancaster bomber, killed along with his seven companions in a 101 Squadron aircraft during the Battle of Berlin.
No one survived to tell the final story of Lancaster LM364, SR-N2, which left Ludford Magna at 5pm on the afternoon of Thursday, December 2, 1943 bound for Berlin along with 457 other Lancasters, Halifaxes and Mosquitoes. All that is known is that the aircraft crashed near the small town of Rehfelde, 19 miles east of Berlin. Seven of the crew were buried in a communal grave in the parish cemetery in the town. It appears that Sgt Garland’s body was not found immediately (this sometimes happened with rear gunners, isolated as they were at the back of the aircraft) but eventually all were reunited in what was known in the official German Tödenliste as ‘Comrade’s Grave No. 425’. The bodies were later moved to the British War Cemetery at Heerstrasse in Berlin in 1948, five of the crew being buried together and three, including Johnny Garland, in separate graves, all in plot 8, row G.
So what made Johnny Garland special? What did was the very fact that he volunteered for the war’s most dangerous job, flying night after night over the world’s most heavily defended cities knowing full well that he was unlikely to survive the 30 operations that would mean he had earned a rest from frontline duties.
He was born in the Nottinghamshire village of Fiskerton, which had the Trent on one side and the Newark-Nottingham rail line on the other. He went to school in nearby Southwell. His father ran a market garden in the village and, after leaving school, Johnny worked for him before he joined the RAF. His best friend joined the same day – he went off to Southern Rhodesia to train as a pilot and returned too late to fly operationally. Johnny’s first and only posting was to 101 Squadron where he joined the crew of 22-year-old F/Sgt Laurence Murrell. He would return frequently to the village – there were regular trains to Fiskerton from Market Rasen, the nearest station to Ludford – and would pick up his bike there and cycle into the village where he would enthral his friends and worry his family with stories of squadron life and how his crew’s greatest fear was crashing near a town they had bombed and then being attacked by angry residents.
On the morning of Friday December 3, 1943 the bad news came: the village postman in Fiskerton, who obviously had inside knowledge on the special telegrams delivered to the families of missing aircrew, told those he met: ‘Rumour has it that Johnny Garland did not come back last night.’The rumour was true. Johnny Garland was dead alongside pilot L
aurence Murrell, his navigator Sgt Richard Webb, wireless operator Sgt Ron Hayes, flight engineer Sgt Ted North, bomb aimer Sgt Bob Kibby, mid-upper gunner Sgt John Cockroft and special operator Sgt Terry Bramley. This was to be one of two tragedies for the Murrell and Bramley families, the pilot’s brother dying in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp while the special operator’s brother, Alan, was killed while serving with the Royal Army Service Corps at Dunkirk.
There were no gallantry medals for any of them but no one would deny they were all heroes.
Chapter 18
Where it Hurts Most
Hitting Hitler’s Oil Supplies
During the summer of 1944 Bomber Command had been under the control of Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force and had played a significant part in ensuring the success of the D-Day landings and, eventually, the break-out from Normandy. Its bombers had also played a major role in the destruction of V1 launch sites and V2 storage sites. The late summer was to see the RAF’s Lancasters and Halifaxes pounding German defensive positions around those Channel ports still to be taken by the Allies and, in September, supporting the airborne landings at Arnhem.
By mid-September Bomber Command was once again under the direct control of the Air Ministry with the caveat that it could be used whenever necessary to support ground operations. Bomber Command was to be given a new primary role, the destruction of Germany’s synthetic oil industry which, it was argued, would cripple its armed forces. Bombers would also be used to attack transport networks and factories still producing armoured vehicles and trucks at almost record levels for the Wehrmacht. It was a policy, it was believed (and was to be proved correct), that would hit Germany ‘where it hurts most’. Harris, in the meantime, still believed his bombers would be best employed wearing the Germans down by returning to the destruction of their major cities and industrial areas, in a return to area bombing. His orders, however, were clear: fuel production and storage had to take precedence. But those same orders did allow him some leeway when the weather or tactical conditions made precision bombing impossible, and it was something he was to exploit to the full.
1 Group itself was to become the major element in Bomber Command’s main force. 5 Group, with its own target marking and precision bombing squadrons, was operating virtually independently (it was known, rather disparagingly outside 5 Group circles, as ‘Cocky’s Private Air Force’ after its AOC, Sir Ralph Cochrane) as was 3 Group, newly-equipped with Lancasters fitted with G-H, the new and very effective blind bombing equipment. This left 1 Group along with the Yorkshire-based 4 and 6 Groups, supported by target-marking squadrons of 8 Group, to act as Bomber Command’s heavy artillery. During the autumn 1 Group was also to expand substantially with the addition of three new squadrons, 150 (one of the original 1 Group squadrons, now returned from the Middle East), 153 and 170 and three new airfields, Scampton, Fiskerton and Dunholme Lodge, all transferred from 5 Group. Dunholme was used only briefly, closing within a month of its transfer simply because the skies around Lincoln had become too crowded.
Another major change was the transfer of training duties to the newly-formed 7 Group in November. It was reformed with its headquarters at Grantham to oversee training throughout Bomber Command and on November 3 the 1 Group training airfields, Lindholme, Blyton and Sandtoft, became 71 Base, the first to be set up under the auspices of the new training command. Sturgate near Gainsborough, which had arrived too late for an operational role, was also put under the base’s control although, once more, it was not to be used operationally before the war ended. By this time Bomber Command was awash with newly-trained crews and many of those who went through courses at 71 Base airfields never got to fly operationally, being classified as ‘supernumerary’, and were allocated menial jobs. Lancasters were also in plentiful supply and 1 Group’s Lancaster Finishing School was moved from Hemswell to Lindholme in November and disbanded altogether in January 1945.
626 Squadron’s outdoor radar section, June Wade, Joe Goode, Kit Thompson, Bud Currie and Gordon Sturrock (Wickenby Archive)
Digging out a snow-bound Lancaster, Kelstern winter 1944. (625 Squadron Association)
One of the men to join 1 Group that autumn was Clem Koder, an experienced pilot who had spent the previous two years with Flying Training Command. He went through an operational training unit with the intention of joining a Mosquito squadron but was then offered a place alongside a ‘headless’ 100 Squadron bomber crew at 1667HCU at Sandtoft. They had arrived there from Waltham after their pilot lost his nerve after just three operations. F/O Koder already had the requisite time on night and instrument flying, albeit mainly on Ansons, but jumped at the chance. He spent a couple of weeks with his new crew at Sandtoft before they were all posted to 625 Squadron at Kelstern.
His story there mirrors that of many young men in Bomber Command is best told in his own words: ‘Duties with Flying Training Command, although a most necessary function, called for no relaxation but lacked the excitement and great spirit that one found on an operational squadron. Always when asked if I was frightened on operations I would say no, I was more frightened that I would not keep up the high standard set by the other squadron personnel. This also applies to the ground crews whose servicing was of the highest quality at all times of the day and night regardless of the weather conditions. It was the magnificent spirit of all that helped me and I shall always feel proud to be one of those who operated in Bomber Command.
‘I found it a great thrill to taxi out in my Lancaster, G-George, with others around the perimeter track at Kelstern and to be signalled onto the runway to prepare for take-off. Then we would be lined up, looking straight down the main runway, brakes on with increasing revs, the whole aircraft shuddering, yearning to be released, and then, at the moment of take-off, away we went, backs pressed against our seats, a quick glance to port to give a wave to the station commander and others gathered giving us an encouraging send-off.
‘Very often take-off would be at dusk and the usual practice would be to circle the base gradually to about 5,000 feet and as one did so 460 Squadron RAAF at Binbrook, some four miles to the west, could be seen similarly circling base and climbing. To the northwest 100 Squadron at Waltham, just south of Grimsby, could also be seen, and so too could we see 101 Squadron climbing from Ludford Magna, a few miles south of us, and beyond them was 300 Squadron at Faldingworth and 170 at Dunholme Lodge.
‘At 5,000 feet the aircraft, still climbing, headed towards Reading, and in the fading light the concentration of Lancasters would be seen forming a long stream and picking up other squadrons from South Lincolnshire and Huntingdonshire. At Reading there was still sufficient light to pick out many aircraft in the bomber stream as it turned to port in a south easterly direction towards Beachy Head. By the time the Channel coast was reached the light had gone and so had the comforting sight of all those other Lancasters.
‘As the English coastline receded and the blackness of the water took over, one felt somewhat isolated in spite of the confidence I had in my navigator, Hal Zlotnik, a Canadian from Vancouver, and the confidence in the navigators of other aircraft I knew were nearby. Strangely enough, some of those navigators had been pupils of mine only months earlier at the Observers’ Advanced Flying Unit in Cumberland.
Clem Koder (third left) and his 625 Squadron crew. Others on the photograph are Sgt H. Bulman, flight engineer, P/O T. Donahue RCAF, bomb-aimer, F/O H. Zlotnik RCAF, navigator, F/Sgt K. Stewart, wireless operator, W/O K. Sheehan, RCAF, mid-upper gunner, and F/S A. Avery RAAF, rear gunner. (625 Squadron Association)
PA177 of 100 Squadron pictured at Waltham soon after the aircraft was delivered. It was named ‘Jug and Bottle’ and a public house built in the 1990s close to its dispersal was named after the aircraft. (Arthur White)
‘After some 20 minutes, the blackness below would be broken by the pale line formed by a sandy beach of a chalk white cliff on the French coast, some 17,000 or 18,000 feet below. Still feeling on one’s own, a check with Hal seeme
d necessary. As usual, he gave me the assurance I was looking for – we were on track.
‘Time went on and through the darkness no friendly aircraft appeared to be keeping us company. At about 20 minute intervals I called up Hal for the usual check and while I received the usual comforting response, he knew my reason for doing so.
‘After three or perhaps four hours, there was suddenly 30 seconds to H-Hour, and the first illuminators could be seen falling over the target area followed by the mixed coloured target indicators. Within a very short space of time a large area of the ground and air space became a scene of brilliance, supplemented by searchlights and flak. It was then that I knew I had not been alone and was in good company for now I could see discipline and determination epitomised by the bomber force over the target area. For me, this impressed me more than anything I had seen or taken part in during the Second World War, crews flying for many hours unseen by one another, yet to arrive over the target area right on time, just as they had been instructed at briefing.
‘When home on leave, my father was keen to know about our operational flying and he quite touched me by asking if he could be one of my gunners. As for my mother, I said very little but there was one moment when she said: “Your father told me that a German night fighter came so close to you one night that you could read the number on it.” Now mother was known for exaggerating stories and became quite indignant when I explained it would have been impossible to read the number on the side of any aircraft at night. However, when father joined us she asked: “Didn’t you tell me that a German fighter flew so close over the top of his cockpit that he could read the number?” To this, I responded: “Oh, that was an Fw190”. “Yes, yes, that’s the number!” came mother’s reply.’
1 Group Page 27
