by John Nichol
‘The fire brigades and ARP personnel are powerless to cope with the situation. Day has been turned to night by the billowing clouds of evil-smelling smoke which fill the streets. The sky is blotted out.’ The Ministries of Propaganda and Munitions were badly damaged, the Foreign Office in the Wilhelmstrasse was wrecked, as was the gigantic Air Ministry building in Leipzigerstrasse – ‘Göring’s pride and joy’. The Wilhelmstrasse and Unter den Linden districts were burning so ferociously that ‘firemen have given up the hopeless struggle. They have cordoned off whole blocks of buildings and simply left them to burn themselves out. Armed guards equipped with gas masks against the suffocating smoke are stationed at the cordons.’
The once beautiful, tree-lined Unter den Linden was ‘a shambles’, with almost every building on fire. ‘There was a sound of hissing as light rain fell on the flames.’ The University State Library and the Bristol Hotel – one of Berlin’s finest – were destroyed. The Adlon Hotel, requisitioned for the homeless, was still standing, but all its windows had been blown out. The Gestapo headquarters in Prinz Albrechtstrasse and the headquarters of the Berlin police were both badly damaged. There was an SS cordon round the workers’ quarters north of the Alexanderplatz to prevent workers leaving the factories and escaping to the country, and armed guards also surrounded Berlin’s zoo in the Tiergarten, while troops armed with rifles and machine guns hunted the leopards, elephants, bears, tigers and lions which had escaped after the zoo was hit by bombs. ‘Berliners, fatalistic, now believe that the RAF will return every night until Berlin is in ruins.’
* * *
Night after night, 617 Squadron returned to occupied Europe, and on the evening of 12 February 1944 twelve Lancasters took off to attack the Anthéor viaduct on the French Riviera. Five hundred and forty feet long, it spanned the gap between two rocky headlands a few miles west of Cannes on the Côte d’Azur. They had already bombed it twice before, in September and November 1943, but on both occasions it had sustained only slight damage to the railway tracks and virtually none to the viaduct itself. The bombs they dropped were delay-fused because, flying so low, if the bombs exploded on impact, the blast would destroy the Lancasters as well as the viaduct, but the ground around the viaduct was solid rock, and as a result the bombs were ‘bouncing all over the place’ and the chance of any of them coming to rest close enough to one of the columns of the viaduct to destroy it was very remote indeed.12 Nonetheless, they were to make one more attempt, because the line the viaduct carried, a vital rail link between the south of France and Italy, was now being used to transport 15,000 tons of military supplies a day to German forces resisting the Allied advances from the Anzio bridgehead in Italy.
At the pre-flight briefing, the intelligence officer had warned them that the viaduct was defended by twelve heavy guns, several lighter ones and searchlights, though there would at least be no moonlight – on one of the previous raids, the moonlight reflecting from the surface of the Mediterranean had made it seem ‘almost as light as day’, making the raiders clearly visible to the flak batteries. Carrying 12,000-pound Blockbusters in their bomb-bays, the target was at the extreme limit of the Lancasters’ range.
They crossed France at low level, climbing to height to cross the Alps. It was a bitterly cold night, with ‘quite severe ice’ forming on the aircraft. As on the previous ops against the viaduct, cloud was obscuring the area, making it difficult to mark the target with spot fires from high level. The ground defences were also much more active and organised, with banks of searchlights and ‘pretty damn heavy’ flak.13
Cheshire and Martin were to illuminate the target to allow the rest of the force to drop their bombs but, dazzled by searchlights, Cheshire could only drop his markers on the beach at the entrance to the inlet where the viaduct was sited. Martin dived to low level, swooping down the valley towards the viaduct. Even flying exceptionally low, he also had problems from ‘an awful lot of searchlights which made it very difficult to see anything’. The bomb-aimer, Bob Hay, squinting through his bombsight, had just said, ‘I’ve got her, Mick,’ when the Lancaster was hit ‘very hard by anti-aircraft fire’, knocking out two engines.14 A flak burst ripped through the starboard side of Hay’s compartment and there was no further response from him. The flight engineer, Ivan Whittaker, was also badly wounded and lay doubled up on the floor of the aircraft, having been hit in the leg.
Struggling to control the aircraft, Martin aborted the bomb-run. As he turned, Nick Knilans in R-Roger dropped down to 3,000 feet and his gunners opened up on the searchlights – ‘they all went off’. He climbed back to 10,000 feet and made his bomb-run towards the viaduct, which was silhouetted against the surf-line along the beach. In turn, he and the other raiders dropped their bombs and turned for home, but the difficult approach to the target, the bristling air defences and the rocky terrain that made their bombs bounce away from the viaduct defeated them yet again, and it remained intact.
Mick Martin’s aircraft was too badly damaged for him to return to base. The electrical systems were damaged and the bomb-release mechanism was jammed, keeping the bombs in the bomb-bay with the doors hanging open. With only two engines, Martin struggled to prevent the heavily laden and badly damaged aircraft from hitting the sea. Above him, looking down in the bright moonlight, Les Munro could see ‘Mick down so low over the water, he was creating a wash on the surface from the force of his props’.15 The propellers were whipping up such a mist of spray that Martin’s crew at first thought it was smoke from an onboard fire.
Although the bomb-release circuits were destroyed, the crew eventually managed to jettison their bomb after the navigator prodded the release mechanism with his long navigation ruler. The bomb detonated as it struck the water and ‘there was quite some wham’, lifting the aircraft ‘like an escalator after the start button was pushed’.
With no hope of making it back to England, Martin set a course across the Mediterranean while one of his crew tried to work on Bob Hay’s wounds, but in the pitch darkness inside the aircraft it was almost impossible to see what he was doing. Wireless operator Larry Curtis sent an SOS to a fighter airfield on Corsica, but when he asked for a doctor to be put on standby, he was told that none was available. Martin then made for Sardinia and Elmas Field, near Cagliari. He made an emergency landing there, stopping only inches from the end of the small runway, beyond which was a sheer drop into the sea. By then his bomb-aimer, Bob Hay, a veteran of the Dams raid, was already dead. ‘A single shot came through the nose and killed him; that was his goodbye.’16 He was buried in a rough pine coffin in the local cemetery, a few feet from two German graves.
Mick Martin’s had been one of the first all-Australian bomber crews, and they had been flying ops together since October 1941. Martin had always said that they would ‘fly as a crew, live together as a crew, and rely on each other from head to toe, high or low, on ops or on leave’. Such was the loyalty to each other of that original crew that, though they had continued to fly ops after completing their required tours of duty, they pledged that if any of them were killed, the remainder would ‘take the hint’ and come off operations together. True to their word, the Anthéor raid in which Bob Hay died was the last op that Mick Martin, Tom ‘Tammy’ Simpson and Toby Foxlee ever flew with 617 Squadron. As soon as he returned to Woodhall Spa, Martin told the adjutant Harry Humphries that ‘he would now have to leave the squadron. It seemed an unbelievable decision, but he meant it.’17 With Martin standing down, Larry Curtis joined Joe McCarthy’s crew and was also made the squadron’s signals leader. That Martin had not stood down because he’d reached his physical or mental limits was demonstrated when he immediately joined 515 Squadron and went on to fly another thirty-four operations, piloting Mosquito fighter-bombers.
The other crews had all landed safely at Ford in Sussex to refuel, but on the short final hop from there to Woodhall Spa there was another tragic loss, as the Lancaster of a Canadian pilot, Squadron Leader Bill Suggitt, crashed into a hill on the Sussex D
owns soon after take-off with the loss of all eight men on board. Among them was Squadron Leader Tommy Lloyd, the squadron’s intelligence officer and a veteran who had flown with the Royal Flying Corps during the First World War. Suggitt, a non-smoking, non-drinking bookworm with a stand-offish, almost condescending manner, was not universally popular on the squadron, but he was a gifted pilot who could ‘throw a Lancaster around as if it was a child’s toy’. Lloyd was the polar opposite: good-humoured, gregarious, he ‘threw parties, stood all the expense, took his drink like a gentleman and yet still found time to work more hours than necessary’.18 Now both were gone.
Although, as usual, the losses were not discussed, they were nonetheless keenly felt. ‘I think it had more of an effect on us,’ John Bell says, ‘because we were a closer-knit squadron. On Main Force, a crew was just a pilot’s name on a board. Here, you knew crews better and mingled with them more.’
A week after the Anthéor raid, the USAAF and Bomber Command’s Main Force jointly launched Operation Argument – less formally known as ‘Big Week’ – which aimed to lure the Luftwaffe into a decisive battle by launching mass attacks on Germany’s aircraft-manufacturing plants. It was an American plan and Bomber Harris had initially refused to allow his aircraft to take part, since he felt it was diverting resources from the continuing area-bombing campaign against German cities, but pressure from the Chief of the Air Staff forced him to comply. Although it failed to strike a decisive blow and US losses of 250 bombers and 30 fighters suggested that Harris’s reservations might have been justified, German losses, particularly of fighter pilots, were a major blow to Germany’s air defences, and from then on, Allied air superiority grew ever more pronounced as the war continued.
* * *
Meanwhile, ten new crews had arrived to bolster 617 Squadron’s depleted ranks, with each of 5 Group’s other squadrons contributing one top crew each. Among them were crews captained by John Pryor from 207 Squadron, Mac Hamilton from 619 Squadron and Don Cheney from 630 Squadron.
Don Cheney in training
As far back as he could remember, Don Cheney had always wanted to fly. He still has the scrapbooks he filled as a child with pictures of aeroplanes that he’d drawn, and underneath each one are notes of its maximum speed, height ceiling, armaments and so on. ‘I built an air force on paper,’ he says. ‘I used to dream about flying and I even used to dream that I could fly!’19
He grew up in Canada and was seventeen when war broke out. Two days before his eighteenth birthday he signed enlistment papers and fulfilled his childhood dreams by joining the RCAF as a trainee pilot. ‘I was an only child and my parents were desperately worried about me leaving for war. They did their best to keep stiff upper lips, but my dad’s heart must have ached, because he knew that we were in for another conflict as bad as the “war to end all wars” that he had fought.’
On 9 October 1942, Cheney said goodbye to his parents and his girlfriend Gladys at Ottawa Union railroad station. It was a sad parting but, says Gladys, ‘It was the reality of war and the same for everyone – so many people were saying goodbye to one another back then. You just hoped you’d be reunited one day.’ For the next two years she had no idea what he was doing, or even where he was. ‘We didn’t get that sort of information,’ she says. ‘The letters he sent were subject to censorship and could give only the most general and bland information about what he was doing. So I just had to hope and pray that he was safe.’
He arrived in Britain with 12,000 other Canadians on board the Queen Elizabeth and was sent to Bournemouth for further training, joining hordes of Commonwealth aircrews waiting impatiently to join the fight. Almost every day a German Focke-Wulf Fw 190 would come roaring in at low level from the Channel, strafe the buildings and drop 500-pound bombs. ‘One feller close to the explosions was actually blown off the john!’ recalls Cheney with a laugh. ‘This was my first sight of what the war would mean and it put the wind up all us new guys; I realised that they really meant it – this wasn’t Canada any more!’
Cheney began flying Lancasters with 106 Squadron. He was still so boyish-looking it was a wonder he was allowed in an aircraft at all, let alone fly one, but he proved a very capable pilot. To complete the crew, they recruited a flight engineer, Jimmy, a Scottish mechanic. On their first flight, Cheney took off and called, ‘Wheels up!’ There was no reply. ‘Wheels up, Flight Engineer! Wheels up!’ There was still no response.
When Cheney glanced across, he saw his flight engineer with a greenish tinge to his face, gripping the bar across the window as if his life depended on it and staring in horror at the receding ground below him. It turned out that Jimmy had never flown in an aircraft before. Cheney jabbed him in the shoulder and said, ‘Get those bloody wheels up!’ The flight engineer tore his terrified gaze away from the view through the window and did as he was told. A few moments later, one of the starboard engines caught fire. They circled once and made an emergency landing with flames trailing from it. ‘Out came the Fire Brigade, doused us with foam, and that was our first day over – never a dull moment!’
When they weren’t flying or the weather was bad, Cheney and his crewmates, like most other aircrew, headed straight for the pub. ‘We could all sit down, enjoy company, take our minds off the war and meet some young ladies,’ he says. He and his wireless operator clubbed together to buy a maroon Austin 10 convertible they saw advertised in a newspaper. They caught a train to Croydon, paid seven pounds for the car and set off back to base through the centre of London.
The car didn’t prove to be such a bargain and broke down right in the middle of Trafalgar Square. Resplendent in full service uniform, they were trying to change the distributor head while traffic piled up behind them, when a large British bobby appeared, tapping his truncheon in the palm of his hand, and said, ‘Move it! Now!’ Sweating and cursing, they had to push the car out of Trafalgar Square. Once repaired, the Austin became the crew transport to pubs, dances and anywhere else they wanted to go. ‘We could get all seven crew in there,’ Cheney says, ‘and more if we needed: three in the front, three on the back seat, and three sitting up on the folded-down hood. Once we were heading for the pub and I took a corner a bit too fast. The three fellows sitting on the folded hood were thrown clear off and ended up in the ditch at the side of the road!’
Cheney flew eighteen ops with 106 Squadron and saw plenty of aircraft shot down. ‘Of course, at night you couldn’t see the aircraft themselves,’ he says:
You’d see the flashes of flak bursts, a ball of sparks with a bright centre, then falling flames and an explosion. It was a stark sight – I realised this was fellow aircrew dying – but there was little time to dwell on it. Getting to the target was the most important thing to do, the sole reason we were all in the sky, so you just pressed on and prayed that the Lord was on our side, riding on our tail.
On moonlit nights, he says, it felt like ‘a shooting gallery for night-fighters’. There was also a risk of being ‘coned’ by searchlights. If one or two searchlights caught a Lancaster in their beams, others would swing on to it as well, locking it in a cone of light that was so bright that the pilot often literally could not see anything at all. ‘You were totally dazzled, and once you were coned, the flak opened up on you and frequently that was that.’
Fortunately we were only coned once with a full bomb-load aboard. I stuck the nose straight down, dived down for five or six thousand feet, then twisted, turned and heaved with all my force on the control column in a climb back to near stalling speed and then pushed the nose back down again. Each time I was weightless for several seconds, my bum lifted right off the seat and I was left hanging in mid-air in my safety straps. It was all I could do to level out and push the controls forward again but, unlike a lot of other guys, we managed to get out of it.
The same week that Cheney had joined 106 Squadron, its commander, Guy Gibson, had left to form 617 Squadron for the Dams raid. Now Cheney’s crew were about to follow in Gibson’s footsteps, though wh
en he received orders to report to his Station Commander in the summer of 1943, he at first assumed he must have done something bad and was about to be sent home in disgrace. That fear disappeared when the Station Commander greeted him warmly, told him to sit down and relax, gave him a cigarette and even lit it for him. He informed Cheney that 617 Squadron was rebuilding after the losses on the Dams raid and wanted his crew to join them.
Cheney’s first thought was ‘My God, 617 Squadron – “The Death or Glory Boys”’ – one of the many nicknames they had been given by the rest of the RAF. He asked for time to discuss it with this crew and they met in his room over a few beers. A couple of them were ‘somewhat reticent about 617’, Cheney says.
We knew about their losses and were fully aware of the dangers involved, especially in relation to low flying, but the prestige of the squadron won the day, especially because of the targets they were attacking. This wouldn’t be about dropping tons of bombs on cities or bombing somebody’s house, we would be targeting specific aspects of the enemy war machine: factories, weapons sites, bridges. It was our chance to make a real difference.
When they eventually arrived on 617 Squadron, they were given a vivid demonstration of the dangers they would face, for it was only a few days after the raid on the Anthéor viaduct in which Mick Martin’s bomb-aimer, Bob Hay, was killed, and Bill Suggitt’s Lancaster crashed with the loss of all of the crew. It was a sobering welcome to their new squadron, and the coming weeks would provide plenty more reminders of the dangers they all faced when, during an operation against the aero-engine factory at Woippy on 15 March 1944, the actions of one air gunner contributed to the growing legend of 617 Squadron.
