153 Squadron was to suffer its first casualties in one of the most ambitious bombing operations of the war. Operation Hurricane was directed at the city of Duisburg and launched on October 14. The first phase involved a mass daylight attack by 1,013 Lancasters, Halifaxes and Mosquitoes. They were followed by more than 1,200 American bombers and the third phase involved a second Bomber Command attack, this time by 1,005 aircraft. Over 9,000 tons of bombs and incendiaries fell on Duisburg in less than 24 hours at a total cost to the Allies of just 20 bombers. Most of those were lost in the first wave of the first attack and eight of them were from 1 Group.
F/Lt George Wood pictured with his 576 Squadron Lancaster, Rub-A-Dub-Dub. (Elsham Wolds Association)
The first aircraft began leaving Kirmington shortly after 6.15am with ‘H’ hour at 8.45am. Duisburg was well defended by flak batteries and it was these that took their toll on the 1 Group aircraft leading the first wave. F/O Joe Brouilette’s 153 Squadron Lancaster was hit and crashed in the Rhine while a second from the new squadron, flown by P/O George Draper, crashed near the city. There were no survivors from either aircraft.
Frank Woodley was a mid-upper gunner with 550 Squadron and watched with something approaching astonishment as his aircraft headed towards the target in the centre of some 700 RAF bombers. It was, he said, a sight which was to remain with him long after the war.
Four aircraft were lost from Wickenby. Two from 12 Squadron, flown by F/O Theo Sorensen and Canadian F/Lt Roy Clearwater, and one from 626, flown by F/Lt Reg Aldus, all fell to the flak gunners while a fourth, Q-Queenie of B Flight, ditched off Donna Nook soon after take off, the crew being picked up by a rescue launch. The wireless operator, F/Sgt John Penrose, later recalled that the port outer caught fire within minutes of the Lancaster becoming airborne and they were ordered to jettison their bombs over the sea and then ditch, which they did, the Lancaster sinking within a minute, by which time all seven men on board had got out through the escape hatches. The dinghy had come out of the starboard wing the right way up so most of crew didn’t even get their feet wet. They fired off a flare and 25 minutes later saw a Morse signal being flashed in the distance ‘Help coming’. A few minutes later an air sea rescue launch from Grimsby pulled alongside and the seven men clambered aboard.
An all-Polish crew was lost from Faldingworth on the same raid along with the crews of F/O Andrew McNeill (166 Squadron), F/O Harry Dodds and F/O Alan Abrams (both 550 Squadron). Only five men from all those brought down survived. 1 Group’s final loss was the Lancaster of P/O Lloyd Hannah and his crew from 625 Squadron at Kelstern, who were on their first operation. They were flying CF-S, a veteran Kelstern Lancaster, and took off at 6.30 am and within a minute an engine burst into flames and the aircraft began to lose power. P/O Hannah, one of six Canadians on board, immediately ordered his crew to bail out and they jumped from less than 600 feet. Five landed safely but the bomb aimer, F/Sgt Lloyd Bennett, was killed when his parachute failed. The pilot died when the aircraft crashed and exploded near the village of Little Grimsby, just five miles from the airfield. Villagers were convinced he deliberately remained at the controls and managed to prevent the heavily-laden aircraft hitting houses and some years ago a plaque in his memory was unveiled in the local church. His crew were back in action within a fortnight and were to survive after bailing out on another operation in February 1945 after an incident which led to their new wireless operator winning a CGM.
The surviving 1 Group aircraft were back at their Lincolnshire airfields later that morning and many were immediately warned they would be back over Duisburg again that night. After a few hours sleep1 Group crews were again in the first wave but this time flak opposition was light and only three were lost, the crews of P/O James Campbell (626 Squadron), F/O George Shaw (166) and an ABC Lancaster from 101 flown by P/O Colin Hunt.
F/Lt Colin Henry’s 12 Squadron crew pictured at Grimsby with the skipper of the port’s air sea rescue launch after they were fished out of the North Sea after ditching during the Duisburg raid on October 14, 1944. (Wickenby Archive)
A Lancaster from 626 Squadron at Wickenby came to grief as it returned from a raid on Stuttgart later in the month. In attempting to land, F/O Robert Clements’ aircraft overshot, hit some trees and crashed close to the Market Rasen-Lincoln railway line in Stainton-by-Langworth. Rescuers were quickly on the scene and helped extricate the crew from the wreckage. Six of them survived with varying degrees of injuries but the flight engineer, Sgt Bob Terry, died while being taken to Lincoln County Hospital. Three other 1 Group aircraft were lost in this raid, two from 460 and one from 550 Squadrons with only one man surviving.
Three days later Essen was attacked by a record number of RAF heavy bombers, 1,055, in an early evening raid. Just eight aircraft were lost, three of them from 625 Squadron. F/O Owen Morshead’s Lancaster disappeared without trace while that flown by Canadian P/O Lloyd Tweter crashed in Essex on its return. The third aircraft collided with a Halifax of 462 Squadron, which operated from Driffield, over Belgium. Both aircraft exploded and the only survivor was Lancaster pilot S/Ldr Hamilton, a flight commander, who was blown clear and was back at Kelstern inside a week. Also lost on the same raid were F/O Denis Ritchins’ crew from Binbrook, F/O Douglas MacLean’s from 12 Squadron and F/O Tom Dawson whose crew were the last 576 Squadron casualties from Elsham before the squadron moved to its new home at Fiskerton, near Lincoln.
‘We Dood It Too’ of 150 Squadron, which flew three operations from Fiskerton before the squadron moved to Hemswell. (Martin Nichol/David Briggs collection)
When S/Ldr Hamilton returned to Kelstern he found a new squadron CO in charge. W/Cmdr John Barker was one of the very few men to command both a Spitfire and a Lancaster squadron and when he arrived at Kelstern had never been at the controls of a four-engined bomber before. John Barker, a graduate of Brasenose College, Oxford, and later to become an air vice marshal, was a remarkable airman and, after an hour’s instruction on a Lancaster at Kelstern, volunteered to take a new crew on their first operation. He arrived at 625 Squadron from a staff job at the Air Ministry after flying both Army Co-operation and Spitfire operations earlier in the war. At Kelstern he proved enormously popular, flying regularly and thoroughly earning the DFC he was awarded in 1945. Squadron records note he was regarded as an ‘incredibly brave’ airman. He also kept a Spitfire MkV at Kelstern for fighter affiliation work and would spend many hours flying it around Lincolnshire.
Two back-to-back raids on Cologne at the end of October cost Bomber Command just two bombers out of the 1,398 taking part. Both of them were from 1 Group. One was flown by 21-year-old Australian F/O Edward Reid who, along with his 18-year-old navigator, P/O Arthur Emery, had been awarded a DFC for an operation earlier in the autumn. They were one of the youngest crews at Binbrook and all died that night. The second aircraft lost was PM-H from 103 Squadron at Elsham, flown by a young Canadian, F/Sgt Jackson Cooke, and he was to be awarded a CGM for his bravery that night.
F/Sgt Cooke’s Lancaster was hit by anti-aircraft fire just after the bombs were released. The rudder controls were wrecked and fuel tanks in both wings holed. The flight engineer reckoned they had enough fuel to keep them airborne for 10 minutes and F/Sgt Cooke immediately headed for the Allied lines in Belgium. Once they were over friendly territory he ordered the crew to bail out but, as they were doing so, the mid-upper gunner, F/Sgt John McCoubrey, accidentally opened his parachute inside the fuselage. When he saw what had happened, F/Sgt Cooke went back into the cockpit of the Lancaster, determined to land the aircraft and save his gunner’s life. As he tried to land in a field near Namur two engines failed. His CGM citation went on: ‘Coolly and skilfully, this intrepid pilot achieved his purpose and made a crash-landing, incurring little further damage to the aircraft. This airman set a magnificent example of skill, courage and captaincy in the most difficult circumstances.’ Sadly a month later F/Sgt Cooke and five of his crew (his bomb aimer had landed behind German lines but eventually mana
ged to escape) were killed in a daylight raid on Dortmund.
Another man who received an immediate bravery award, in this case a DFC, was P/O Lawrence Woods, the bomb aimer in F/O Ted Owen’s 460 Squadron crew. During a daylight attack on the refinery at Wanne-Eickel in the Ruhr their aircraft was hit by flak and the pilot was badly wounded. P/O Woods, whose only previous ‘flying’ experience was a few hours he had spent on Binbrook’s indoor Link trainer, took over the controls and, despite high clouds and severe icing, flew the Lancaster back to England. By this time the pilot had recovered sufficiently to land their aircraft, K-2 The Nazi Killer, at Manston.
A raid on Düsseldorf early in November saw both 153 and 576 Squadrons lose aircraft from their new bases. 153, which was commanded by W/Cmdr Francis Powley, formally of 166 Squadron, had only been at Scampton for a few days when P/O Robert McCormack, one of many RCAF aircrew now serving in 1 Group, and his crew failed to return, the first of 22 Lancasters the squadron was to lose on operations from Scampton, sadly including one flown by their CO. Of the two 576 crews, only one man survived while 550 also lost the crew of F/Lt Don Foster. Two nights later six aircraft from 1 Group were lost in an attack on Bochum, including the 166 Squadron crew of F/O Joe Wilson who were on their 29th operation.
1 Group was to spend much of November attacking oil targets and providing support for the Allied advances. The attack on Dortmund at the end of the month in which F/Sgt Cooke lost his life cost the group six aircraft. Sgt Cooke’s Lancaster was involved in a mid-air collision with another from 550 Squadron and crashed out of control, killing all those on board, the second Lancaster making it safely back to North Killingholme. The raid cost 153 another aircraft and the crew of F/Lt William Pow. The rear gunner survived from the 101 Squadron crew of F/O John Lyons as did the rear gunner in F/O Ron Fennell’s 12 Squadron Lancaster. The sixth aircraft lost was that of F/O Maurice Gray from 460 Squadron. Mid-air collisions were every crew’s nightmare and another occurred on the night of December 6-7 when 475 Lancasters from 1 and 3 Groups attacked a synthetic oil plant at Leuna in eastern Germany. On the approach to the target P/O Peter Walter’s Lancaster from 460 Squadron collided with another from 635 Squadron at Downham Market, both aircraft exploding in the air moments later. The only survivor was the Binbrook aircraft’s pilot who was blown clear. 1 Group’s other losses that night were the crews of F/O Harry Johnson from 103 and F/Lt Joseph Morris from 550 Squadron.
Acts of bravery such as that which earned F/Sgt Cooke his award often went unrecorded. On the night of December 12-13 1 Group was involved in what was to prove to be the last heavy night attack of the war on Essen. F/O Philip Picot’s 103 Squadron Lancaster was hit by flak and he ordered his crew to bail out. However, the rear gunner, 19-year-old Canadian F/Sgt Prince Yates, had been badly wounded and F/O Picot is believed to have remained at the controls of his aircraft and tried to land to save the life of F/Sgt Yates, only for the Lancaster to crash. This was the story the surviving members of the crew managed to piece together and were able to tell when the war ended. 150 Squadron lost its first Lancaster on this raid (and, incidentally, the first four-engined bomber lost on operations from Hemswell) when F/Lt George Devereau’s aircraft was shot down. 460 Squadron also lost one of its most experienced pilots. S/Ldr James Clark, who had already earned a DFC and AFC and had been mentioned in dispatches, was on his 53rd operation when his aircraft was hit by flak. At least two other members of his crew, the navigator F/O Brian Reid and rear gunner F/O John Scott, were on their second tours.
12 Squadron also lost an aircraft that night, three of F/O Reg Veitch’s crew surviving. They would lose another two nights later when P/O Eric Gillingham’s Lancaster burst into flames and dived into the ground near Holbeach as it was heading back to Wickenby. The American pilot of a 153 Squadron Lancaster, F/O Harry Schopp, was killed along with three of his crew when their aircraft collided with another Lancaster in Bomber Command’s only raid of the war on the town of Ulm, mid-way between Stuttgart and Munich. 101 Squadron lost an ABC Lancaster in the same raid along with F/O Don Ireland and his crew.
One 550 Squadron crew had a remarkable escape during a raid on a refinery at Merseberg, south of Berlin when their aircraft, N-Nan, was hit by a shower of incendiaries. One stuck in the wing root and ignited. The mid-upper gunner, Sgt Frank Woodley, raised the alarm and immediately the flight engineer, F/Sgt John Allen and the wireless operator used the escape axe to chop a hole in the fuselage. The flight engineer put his gloved hand outside the aircraft and snuffed out the incendiary. Back at North Killingholme it was discovered the Lancaster had been hit by no fewer that 50 incendiaries while a 1,000lb bomb had gone clean through the tailplane.
F/O Les Cameron, his crew, ground crew and 550 Squadron personnel at North Killingholme. Behind them is Lancaster LM273 BQ-O in which the crew did most of their tour with the squadron. The aircraft was lost in February 1945 durring a raid on Pforzheim. On the photograph are (doorway) F/Lt Avery (squadron navigation leader), F/Lt Bill Peek (bombing leader); (back row) Sgt Dave Eldridge, Sgt Frank Popple, F/Lt Jock Shaw, F/O Peggy Burnside (intelligence officer), F/O Cameron, Sgt Joe White, Sgt Glen Sutherland, P/O Joe Rigby, Sgt F. Piertney and S/Ldr B. Redmond. In front are the ground crew of LM273. (Jim Cameron, via 550 Squadron Association.
At Binbrook the whole station turned out to say farewell to G/Cpt Hughie Edwards VC, who had been station commander there since February 1943. During that time he had flown on at least 15 operations and marked his departure by taking the new crew of P/O Arthur Whitmarsh to Essen on their first operation. He was succeeded as station commander by 460’s CO, W/Cmdr Keith Parsons, and left 1 Group to take up a post in Ceylon.
There was to be no Christmas respite for 1 Group five aircraft were lost late on Christmas Eve in a relatively small-scale attack on railway targets and an airfield around Cologne. One of those lost was from Waltham, F/O Oscar Griffiths and crew being 100 Squadron’s first casualties since mid-September. A second aircraft from the squadron crashed while trying to land at Squire’s Gate at Blackpool after an order diverting them to the USAAF airfield at Bungay in Suffolk. The crew survived the crash but not, perhaps, the ridicule over a 200 mile diversion error! Of the other four 1 Group aircraft lost, two from 166 and one each from 103 and 460 Squadrons, just one man escaped with his life.
170 Squadron, which had moved from Kelstern to Dunholme and finally to Hemswell since its formation, had flown over 300 sorties with 1 Group during December and was to suffer its first loss in a highly-accurate attack on the synthetic oil refinery at Schloven-Buer near Gelsenkirchen on the night of December 29-30. The crew lost was that of 27-year-old Geordie F/O Harry Ross, their Lancaster, known as ‘Mama’s Madhouse’, crashing after being hit by flak near the target. The squadron was to lose another dozen aircraft before the war ended.
1944 had begun for 1 Group with an attack on Berlin and was to end with an attack on the railway yards at Osterfeld, near Leipzig. It was a wholly 1 Group raid, with 149 Lancasters taking part supported by 17 8 Group Mosquitoes. Two bombers were shot down and their crews killed, those of F/Lt Charles Hyde from 150 and F/O Jim Sherry from 166 Squadrons. Three of the crew of a 626 Squadron Lancaster were killed when their aircraft was shot down by ‘friendly fire’ over the Allied lines and a second from the Wickenby squadron crash-landed at Manston on its return.
By the time the aircraft taking part in the Osterfeld raid had returned to Lincolnshire the new year was dawning. Victory was a little over four months away yet the war was far from over for the men of 1 Group.
Nose art on 150 Squadron’s IQ-B Baker, Hemswell, 1944. The idea came from the character of Captain Reilly Ffoul, from the Daily Mirror’s ‘Just Jake’ cartoon (Vernon Wilkes)
Chapter 19
‘They Were All Mad Buggers!’
The Poles who Flew in 1 Group
During an attack on Cologne in late July 1941 a homebound Wellington from all-Polish 300 Squadron was hit by flak as it crossed the Dutch coast and cau
ght fire. The hydraulics were shot away, a wing tip was missing and, as the crew later reported, ‘things kept falling off’.
But the engines were undamaged and F/Sgt Pietrach’s crew reckoned they could make it back to England. More bits fell off, the fire spread to the navigator’s compartment, the bomb doors suddenly went down, leaking fuel caught fire and then an engine failed.
By now the stricken Wellington had crossed the Norfolk coast and F/Sgt Pietrach pointed the nose north, in the direction of 300’s base at Hemswell. A few weeks earlier Pietrach and his crew had had another hairy night when they were hit by flak over St Nazaire and on that occasion had decided to land at the first available airfield. Back at Hemswell they came in for some ribbing from other crews about their safety-first attitude. So it was perhaps not coincidental that their radio should ‘fail’ as they reached the English coast just as they were ordered to divert to the nearest airfield.
On the fighter airfield at Sutton Bridge in south Lincolnshire those on the ground were astonished to see a burning Wellington fly over with sections of fuselage and wing flapping behind it. An urgent message was passed to Hemswell followed by another from Grantham telling much the same story, this time with the added information that the surviving engine also appeared to be misfiring. By the time Pietrach’s B-Baby reached Hemswell most of the station personnel turned out to watch as he carefully prepared for a wheels-up landing on the grass runway. Just as he did the complete tail section of the Wellington came away and was left attached to the fuselage by the rudder cables. Pietrach and his crew emerged from the pile of wreckage unscathed. No jokes were told after that at Hemswell about diverted landings.
1 Group Page 29
