Clem Koder and his crew went on to complete 36 operations with 625 Squadron between September 1944 and March 1945 before moving to Nottinghamshire where he flew Hurricanes on fighter affiliation exercises. His flying career was ended after a heavy landing when he was told by a doctor that because of his height (he was just 5ft 4ins tall) he must never fly heavy aircraft. He then explained he had just completed 36 operations on Lancasters but always sat on a cushion to help his forward visibility!
The autumn of 1944 was also to see a dramatic increase in the survival chances of the young men in 1 Group. The Luftwaffe’s night fighter force, although still highly capable, was hampered by lack of fuel, aircraft and crews, and the Allied advances meant the bombers’ time over hostile territory was greatly reduced. In the period from mid-August to the end of December, 1943 1 Group had lost 190 aircraft and 921 men had been killed: in the same period in 1944 the figures were down to 154 aircraft lost and 823 men killed, despite a big increase in the number of sorties flown. In September 1944 460 Squadron recorded its first loss-free month since being formed while 100 Squadron at Waltham was to go from the night of September 12 until Christmas Eve without losing a single aircraft. One of 100 Squadron’s favourite haunts was the King’s Head pub in Waltham village. The aptly-named Lancaster family lived a couple of doors down from the pub and their daughter, Sally, had been knitting small ‘good luck’ dolls which she would hand out to aircrew as they arrived at the pub. Canadian Peter Bennett wore his pinned to his battle tunic collar, as did many 100 Squadron aircrew at the time. Almost all were to survive. Years later some still returned to see Sally Lancaster, by then married and living in Grimsby, to thank her for those knitted dolls.
E-Squared of 170 Squadron pictured during an air test. The squadron was based briefly at Dunholme Lodge before moving to Hemswell. (Author’s collection)
Losses amongst aircrew were awful for the families of those involved at any time but when uncertainty was added to the mix, the effects on the wives, the children and the parents must have been almost beyond our comprehension. Even in the darkest hours of the war there was a mechanism in place which permitted the names of those killed in action and whose bodies were found to be transmitted back to this country and the information passed to relatives as quickly as possible. It was a process which often took weeks, some times months and occasionally years. Aircraft crashed in the most inaccessible of places and, until the bodies of the occupants could be found and identified, they were simply listed among the ‘missing’. However, a very large number of aircraft and their crews were never found at all, they were simply ‘lost without trace’ and confirmation of their deaths had to wait, in the majority of cases, until the war was over.
Among them were the seven-strong 625 Squadron crew of 21-year-old P/O George Curless. They had taken off from Kelstern during the evening of August 26-27, 1944 as part of a 370-strong force to attack Kiel, an area which was to attract the attention of Bomber Command regularly between 1939 and 1945. Nothing more was heard from their Lancaster, K-King. It simply vanished. The crew’s wireless operator was Sgt John Knight and the following morning his parents, Michael and Nora Knight, who lived in Redcar, received a telegram from Kelstern telling them their son was missing. It was in July 1945, 11 months after Lancaster LM168 CF-R had lifted off from Kelstern for Kiel, they were finally told by the Air Ministry that, in the absence of any further news, their son’s death had been presumed on the night of August 27, 1944. It must have been one of thousands of similar letters sent out to families across the country but its effect, however much expected, must have been devastating. They also received a parcel containing their son’s personal effects, including two photographs, two collar studs, a safety razor, shaving brush and a set of darts. The names of John Knight and his fellow crew members, George Curless, Frank James, Cyril Connolly, Albert Windle, Cyril Plant and Tom Smith, now appear alongside those of 20,000 other airmen on the Runnymede Memorial alongside the Thames, near Windsor. They were all simply lost without trace.
Sgt Les Bucknell in the mid-upper turret of IQ-B of 150 Squadron pictured in clouds over Mannheim in the winter of 1944. (Vernon Wilkes)
That attack on Kiel was to cost 1 Group three other crews, two of them from 12 Squadron. Again, no trace was ever found of the crews of F/O Brian Leuty and F/Lt Charles Taylor RNZAF. A Lancaster from 576 Squadron was attacked and set on fire over the target. F/O Jack Linklater’s crew dropped their bombs and turned out over the sea but it was evident their aircraft would not survive for long and the crew, which included six Canadians, were ordered to bail out. Six were later picked up but the pilot drowned. The Elsham squadron was to lose a second aircraft that night. A small force of Lancasters had followed the bomber stream towards Kiel before diverting to drop mines in the Baltic. Nothing was heard from P/O Harold Murray and his crew and they were presumed to have crashed in the sea. That same operation also cost 166 Squadron two Lancasters and their crews.
Another ‘casualty’ that night was 550 Squadron’s BQ-N. It had first flown back in 1943 with 460 Squadron and was one of the ageing Lancasters passed on to 550 when it was formed the previous November. N-Nan, as W5005 was known, was the squadron hack and was disliked by every crew which flew it. Nan could never reach the heights of other Lancasters and was prone to engine problems. But it soldiered on and that night, in the hands of a mainly Australian crew, left Killingholme on its 94th operation with already over 600 hours of operational flying. Once again problems were encountered and on its return it ditched in the River Humber, only a couple of miles from its home airfield, the crew making it back to base in time for their post-op eggs and bacon. In a letter to the author many years later the aircraft’s Australian mid-upper gunner Bob Sloan explained they were on their approach into North Killingholme when, probably due to flak damage, the flaps would not go down and the aircraft spiralled to port, splashing down in the river before completing 360-degree turn in the water. Near empty tanks helped the aircraft float until the crew could get clear. The dinghy failed to release and the five Australians and one RAF men on board who could swim helped the British flight engineer, Sgt Walters, as they inflated their Mae Wests and swam about three quarters of a mile before they were found by an army unit and the alarm was raised. The story went round North Killingholme that the crew was so fed up with N-Nan’s performance that the Humber ditching might not have been the accident it seemed. And when their replacement aircraft arrived, they were amused to see some squadron wag had named it ‘SS Nan’. It, too, was later to be written off on its return from Merseburg.
100 Squadron’s the Ruhr Rover with the air and ground crew of F/Lt Trueman, Waltham, November 1944. (Author’s collection)
The last week of August was to be a particularly bruising one for 1 Group squadrons. A highly successful attack on the Opel works in Russelheim cost 1 Group eight Lancasters and the lives of 51 young men. 101 lost two ABC Lancasters, each carrying a crew of nine, while 626 also lost two aircraft and their crews. Another two failed to return to Faldingworth, with only a single Polish airman amongst the 14 men on board, an indication of how difficult it was becoming to find replacements for the 300 Squadron men lost during the summer. A few nights later 300 were to lose another three aircraft in an attack on Stettin. Six members of an all-Polish crew died when they were attacked by a night fighter over Denmark while the other two carried all-RAF crews, one crashing in the Baltic and the other being abandoned over Sweden after suffering battle damage.
Briefing at Kirmington late August, 1944. Amongst those pictured is the future actor Donald Pleasence, who was not to return after this particular operation, spending the remainder of the war in a prison camp. (Jim Wright, 166 Squadron Association)
The Stettin raid also proved to be another black night for 101 Squadron with only a single man escaping from the 24 on board the three Lancasters lost, two crashing in the Baltic off the Swedish coast and the third being shot down by a fighter over Denmark. At least two more 1 Group Lancast
ers crash-landed in Sweden, one from 460 Squadron and the other from 626 at Wickenby. The Wickenby Lancaster was badly damaged by a night fighter and after crash-landing in Sweden, the crew was repatriated the following month. When they returned and told their story the mid-upper gunner, F/Sgt Harry Allison was immediately promoted and awarded a DFC for his actions that night. The Lancaster had been attacked by a pair of Ju88s, which wrecked the rear turret and damaged the hydraulics. Allison hand-cranked his turret before firing a long burst at one of the night fighters which was seen to catch fire and explode. His citation read: ‘This officer’s gallantry and presence of mind have always been of the highest order.’
Fifteen of the 23 aircraft lost by Bomber Command that night were from 1 Group with another, from 166 Squadron, failing to return from a mining operation in the Baltic. 166 had also lost a Lancaster over Stettin, F/Lt Fred Dunton’s aircraft being shot down near the target. It was the first operation of his second tour with 166 Squadron. It was to be the last operation of the year in which losses on that scale were to be suffered by 1 Group.
August ended with a concerted daylight attack on V2 storage sites. Many of these were in tunnels and the Bomber Command’s job was to block the entrances, something they were able to achieve with considerable efficiency. This required relatively low level bombing and the German flak gunners brought down six Lancasters, five of them from 1 Group. 550 Squadron lost its CO on the raid. W/Cmdr Alan Sisley, a 27-year-old Australian who had joined the RAF before the war, was flying with F/O Peter Siddall’s crew, who were new to the squadron, when their aircraft was hit by flak during an attack on the storage site at Agenville. There were no survivors. Two Lancasters from Kirmington and a third from Elsham were lost over the same target. Five were killed, six evaded and three more became PoWs including the navigator in F/O Bryan Tutty’s 166 Squadron crew, F/O Donald Pleasence, later to become one of Britain’s best-known actors, not least for his portrayal of F/Lt Colin ‘Forger’ Blythe in the film The Great Escape. A 460 Squadron Lancaster and its crew were lost while attacking a storage site at Raimbert while a 625 Squadron Lancaster was damaged and its crew later safely bailed out.
It was in September that the fortunes of bomber crews in 1 Group turned dramatically. Just nine aircraft were to be lost on operations during the month with three more written off in crashes. All three of these involved 101 Squadron, two aircraft being written off without injury to their crews on their return from a daylight attack on Le Havre. The third, flown by F/O Edward Brooks, broke up in mid-air while on the training flight over Scotland, killing all seven on board, including the rear gunner, Sgt Jimmy Watt who, at 18, was one of the very youngest Canadians killed in Bomber Command.
The crew of 550 Squadron’s N-Nan, which ditched in the Humber. They are (left to right) R. Hopman, pilot, K. Sharpe, navigator, C. Stocks, bomb aimer, E. Kenny, flight engineer, F. Ferguson, wireless operator, R. Sloan, mid-upper gunner, and R. McKenzie, rear gunner. Five of the crew were Australian while the bomb aimer and flight engineer were British. (Bob Sloan)
Numerous operations were flown during the month to attack German defensive positions around Le Havre and later Calais, both being finally bombed into submission. Oil and industrial targets in Germany were also hit and it was during one of these, against Frankfurt, that F/O Ken Cole’s 100 Squadron aircraft was lost with all nine men on board. Flying with him that night was P/O Clement Brown and his bomb aimer. Their crew had just joined 100 Squadron and they flew to Frankfurt that night to gain experience. This was to be the squadron’s last loss until Christmas Eve. Two Lancasters were lost from Kelstern. F/Lt Robert Banks’ aircraft was shot down over Germany and all on board killed, including 625 Squadron’s gunnery leader, F/Lt Dennis Webber DFC, who had taken the place of the crew’s regular rear gunner. A second Lancaster from the squadron, flown by F/O Howard Cornish, was lost along with its eight-man crew when it collided with a Lancaster from 622 Squadron from Mildenhall over Germany.
626 Squadron also lost a Lancaster on the Frankfurt raid, F/O George Bolderson’s Lancaster crashing in the Eiffel region. All the crew managed to bail out but three of them, the 22-year-old Canadian pilot along with Sgt Francis Foster and F/Sgt Stan Dunnett, were captured by civilians and murdered.
F/Lt Tom Greenslade and crew, 625 Squadron. (Gus Hallgren)
The good fortune which often seemed to accompany 100 Squadron crews around this time was in evidence when the new CO, W/Cmdr Ian Hamilton, led aircraft from Waltham in an attack on German flak defences on island of Walcheren. S/Ldr Hedley Scott’s Lancaster was hit repeatedly by flak on its bomb run but, despite being wounded, the bomb aimer, P/O John Sanderson, continued to give instructions to his skipper. As their Lancaster, ND356, left the target it was hit again, rupturing the fuel tanks in the starboard wing and knocking out an engine. It was then hit a third time, badly damaging the nose and wounding the bomb aimer yet again. They made it back across the North Sea on three engines but, with no hydraulics, were diverted to the emergency airfield at Carnaby. There were immediate awards of DFCs for S/Ldr Scott and for P/O Sanderson while their aircraft, which was found to contain 120 flak holes, was repaired at Carnaby and rejoined the squadron early in 1945.
A Distinguished Service Order and Conspicuous Gallantry Medal were awarded to S/Ldr Tom Rippingdale and his navigator Sgt Francis Cridge of 166 Squadron that same night when they were involved in an attack on the docks and industrial area of Neuss, just across the Rhine from Düsseldorf. Their aircraft was attack by a Ju88 while they were on their bomb run. The night fighter was engaged by both gunners and was seen to explode but, in the exchange of fire, the rear gunner, 19-year-old Sgt Ron Hallett, was killed and Sgt Cridge badly wounded. The aircraft itself had been badly damaged, both turrets put out of action and many of the instruments destroyed. Damage to the hydraulics meant the bomb doors would not open but S/Ldr Rippingale estimated that if the bombs were released their combined weight would force the doors open. It worked and the bombs fell away. Sgt Cridge had been hit in the face, arm and body by shell fragments and had lost a lot of blood. Nevertheless, he stayed at his navigator’s table and managed to plot a course back to Manston in Kent where S/Ldr Rippingdale was able to crash-land their crippled Lancaster.
Two other Lancasters failed to return to Kirmington from Neuss. F/O James Davies and his crew were lost without trace. F/O Raymond Miller’s aircraft crashed in Düsseldorf and four of the crew were killed. The pilot and wireless operator were taken prisoner along with their navigator, the unfortunate W/O Ralph Watson, who had only returned to Kirmington a week earlier after being shot down during the Mailly-le-Camp raid in May and evading capture. This time he had to wait until the following May to make it home. Two other 1 Group aircraft were lost in the attack, those of F/O Robert Bamberough of 12 Squadron and F/O Stanley Durrent of 576 Squadron. They were aged just 20 and 21 respectively.
AS-0 of 166 Squadron at Kirmington. This aircraft was lost on a mining operation off the Frisian Islands in late October, 1944. (Peter Green Collection)
NG264 of 150 Squadron pictured over Lincoln Cathedral. The aircraft flew with the squadron during its time at both Fiskerton and Hemswell. (Martin Nichol/David Briggs collection)
460 Squadron at Binbrook managed to go through September without losing a single aircraft but their run of good fortunate ended in another highly successful daylight operation to Emmerich, on the west bank of the Rhine. One was hit by flak, the crew bailing out successfully. The second had the misfortunate to be hit by incendiaries dropped by another Lancaster, killing the wireless operator, F/Sgt Keith Potter, and starting a serious fire in his compartment. The flight engineer and navigator bailed out but the rest of the crew got the fire under control and the aircraft later crash-landed at Hawkinge in Kent. F/Lt Geoffrey Fulford and crew from 166 Squadron were lost on this operation.
It was during early October that the next and final series of major changes to 1 Group came into operation. Three further squadrons were to be added to i
ts strength along with three airfields, all transferred from neighbouring 5 Group. The first of the new squadrons, 153, came into being on October 7 when it was formed from C Flight of 166 at Kirmington. Hours after its formation 11 aircraft of 153 took part in the attack on Emmerich. On October 15 153 moved to what was perhaps Lincolnshire’s most famous bomber station, Scampton. Its last occupants had been 617 Squadron during their dambusting days. It had closed in the late summer of 1943 for the laying of concrete runways and, on its re-opening, had been transferred as 15 Base headquarters to 1 Group along with the airfields at Fiskerton and Dunholme Lodge.
A week after the creation of 153 the second of the new squadrons, 170, was formed from 625’s C Flight at Kelstern with additional aircraft and crews being drafted in from 12, 103 and 626 Squadrons. Its first CO was W/Cmdr Peter Hackworth and it was to move to Dunholme Lodge. The airfield’s proximity to the ring of airfields around Lincoln, including Scampton and Wickenby, Fiskerton, Skellingthorpe, Waddington and Bardney meant that within a month of 170’s arrival they were on the move again, this time to Hemswell with Dunholme Lodge closed to operational flying. At Hemswell 170 would be joined by the third new squadron, 150, which was reformed in Bomber Command at Fiskerton on November 1 and moved two weeks later. 150 were 1 Group ‘old boys’, flying Battles and Wellingtons from Newton, Snaith and Kirmington before being transferred to the Middle East Air Force.
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