After the Flood

by John Nichol

  The Wizernes site had been put beyond repair, and was abandoned without a single V-2 rocket ever being launched from it. However, the destruction was deep underground, and at surface level the site looked little altered, which led 5 Group commander Ralph Cochrane to order another attack three days later, on 20 July. This time Tait marked the target with two smoke markers, but cloud and ground haze were drifting over the target and Nick Knilans told Tait that from 18,000 feet he could not distinguish the markers’ twin plumes of smoke from the general cloud and haze. In an action that was supremely brave, or suicidally foolhardy, while bullets and flak fragments continued to bombard his aircraft, Tait then began to fly his Mustang in a tight circle around the target, calling ‘Bomb on me!’ over the radio.

  Fearing that his bomb might hit Tait’s aircraft, Knilans told his bomb-aimer, who could ‘just barely’ see the Mustang, ‘I don’t like this, don’t bomb.’ He radioed to Tait, ‘We can’t see you. Unable to bomb.’ So did the rest of the squadron. ‘Maybe they were as appalled as I was at the act of bombing Willie and his Mustang,’ Knilans later said. ‘No one ever talked about it. We just turned around and took our Tallboys home again.’19

  The Wizernes V-2 site

  The collapsed dome at Wizernes, like a giant concrete mushroom, still stands, and in 2013 John Bell returned to the site with the author almost seventy years after the raid. At the age of ninety, he braved the blazing sun to climb the steep, bramble-strewn slope of the dome to see exactly where his 12,000-pound Tallboy had struck. ‘I watched this point through my bombsight seventy years ago,’ he said. ‘Now I’m standing on that same spot. What an experience! I could never have imagined, back then, that seventy years later I’d stand in the same place! It really is one of the best moments of my life.’

  CHAPTER 9

  Mac’s Gone!

  25 July 1944 dawned a bright and sunny summer day, and 617 Squadron returned to the V-2 site at Watten. The German flak was intense, and Don Cheney’s Lancaster took a succession of hits – ‘you could hear it pinging off the side of the aircraft’ – and was badly damaged. The aircraft was awash with leaking hydraulic fluid and a cloud of blue, acrid-smelling cordite smoke from the flak shells that were exploding so close to them that they could hear the ‘Boom!’ and feel the plane shudder from the blast. One engine was knocked out and the hydraulic system was so severely damaged that the gun turrets were inoperative, the bomb doors couldn’t be closed and the landing gear couldn’t be lowered.

  The intercom was working, fortunately, but, when checking in with each member of the crew, Cheney was unable to obtain a response from the mid-upper gunner, ‘Mac’ McRostie, and sent the wireless operator, Reg Pool, back to investigate. Pool was back within a few seconds, looking very shaken. ‘Mac’s gone!’ he shouted in Cheney’s ear.

  ‘Gone where?’ Cheney said, puzzled.1

  ‘He’s baled out! I got to the rear door just as his flying boots disappeared outside!’

  Cheney put his aircraft into a gentle banking turn away from the target, and sure enough, 3,000 or 4,000 thousand feet below them, clearly outlined against the green fields, he saw a parachute gliding gently down. There was nothing to be done, so Cheney kept turning and set course for home. Part of the Perspex above the cockpit had been blown out and there were numerous holes in the wings and fuselage, but there was no fire and none of the remaining crew had been wounded.

  As they reached the French coast more flak came up. ‘We took such evasive action as we could,’ Cheney says, ‘with so much of our “laundry” hanging out, but fortunately the flak bursts drifted past harmlessly and we began a steady descent in order to increase airspeed and get out of enemy territory as soon as possible.’ As he was doing so, Flight Engineer Jim Rosher tapped him on the shoulder and pointed upwards.

  There, not more than 15 feet above them and sliding gently to port, was ‘the most beautiful Spitfire I have ever seen!’ Cheney says, smiling at the memory. ‘The Spit slid back and forth above and below us for some time until we were well over the English Channel. Then he perched off the starboard wingtip for about five minutes, grinning and giving us the thumbs-up; then, with a saluting gesture, he peeled off to starboard and was gone.’

  Cheney considered landing at one of several airfields near the coast, but decided they could make it back to their own ‘roost’, and calling for ‘special consideration’ from the tower, he was cleared to come straight in. As they made the final stages of their approach, they managed to blow down and lock the landing gear using the emergency air bottle, avoiding the need for a more dangerous ‘crash landing’. They touched down and coasted to a stop. They were escorted to the nearest dispersal pad by a retinue of fire trucks and ambulances and, still fearing a fire or explosion, as soon as they came to a halt Cheney ordered the crew to evacuate the aircraft.

  Once safely on the ground and away from the aircraft, Cheney turned to look at his Lancaster. They had been flying P-Peter – not their regular aircraft but ‘borrowed’ from a comrade who was on leave while their own was undergoing a service check – and the flak storm they had flown through had left it riddled with nearly a thousand holes. ‘The last I saw of it’, Cheney says, ‘was when it was parked behind one of the service hangars, where mechanics were busy salvaging as much of it as possible. A new machine was sent in to replace it, and, on his return, my colleague reluctantly accepted my apologies for doing away with his beloved P-Peter! It also cost me a good few at the Mess bar in order to assuage his crew!’

  Although he didn’t realise it at the time, Cheney himself had also been hit by flak. A couple of days later, he found a large lump on his right shin just below his knee. He then remembered that in the heat of battle over the target, his right leg had suddenly been knocked off the rudder pedal and there had been a burning sensation like a bee sting. It had faded after a few moments and he had then forgotten all about it. There was a scab on his leg and his battledress had a trace of dried blood at the same spot, but seeing nothing else amiss, he promptly dismissed it. However, a few days later, the swelling was getting bigger, the wound was sore and itchy and turning purple, so he went to see the medical officer.

  The MO took a quick look, swabbed the wound with alcohol and asked his WAAF nursing assistant to hold a white metal tray close to his hand. With a pair of pincers he then extracted a jagged piece of black flak-shell fragment which had lodged itself against the shin bone and let it drop with a clang into the tray. Having bandaged the wound, he rummaged about, found a small cardboard box, lined it with cotton wool, laid the shrapnel fragment in it as if it were a precious jewel and put another layer of cotton wool on top. He then handed it to Cheney and slapped him on the back.

  Cheney kept ‘my very own piece of a deadly German 88mm flak shell as a keepsake of a very lucky escape! It reminded me of that very narrow line between life and death.’ It was a very narrow line, and Cheney would be reminded just how thin that line could be as his tour of ops at the cutting edge of Bomber Command progressed.

  * * *

  During much of July 1944, the Allied advance from its Normandy beachheads had been painfully slow as they fought ‘The Battle of the Hedgerows’ with retreating German forces. It was named for the terrain that made Normandy such forbidding territory for invading troops. The small fields, surrounded by thick, high hedges and flanked by sunken lanes and ditches, were a nightmare for Allied tanks to cross, while providing perfect cover for enemy machine guns and anti-tank weapons. Only on 19 July were Allied troops able to begin the break-out from the hedgerows into more open country where the advance could accelerate.

  Before D-Day, most of 617 Squadron’s ops had been at night, but in the aftermath, with the Allies enjoying progressively greater air superiority, more and more raids were made in daylight. On 31 July, 617 Squadron was briefed for a daylight attack on a storage tunnel housing V-weapons at Rilly-la-Montagne. Once more they would be supported by Lancasters of 9 Squadron. 617 were to bomb the tunnels at the southern end
, while 9 Squadron targeted the northern end. They were all armed with Tallboys fitted with time-delay fuses, allowing the bombs time to penetrate the tunnel roof before exploding, increasing the damage caused and making salvage operations more difficult. Once the Tallboys had been dropped, 300 Lancasters from the Main Force, each carrying twelve 1,000-pound bombs with delay fuses, were to carpet-bomb the tunnel from end to end, aiming to ensure its complete devastation.

  One of the 617 Squadron crews was piloted by Flight Lieutenant William Reid, VC, the son of a blacksmith from Ballieston near Glasgow. Even with the moustache he cultivated, he seemed far younger than his twenty-two years, though the look in his eyes showed he had seen and done things that would have destroyed a weaker man. Reid had been awarded the Victoria Cross while with his previous outfit, 61 Squadron, for his heroism on a raid on Düsseldorf in November 1943. Soon after crossing the Dutch coast, his Lancaster was attacked by a Messerschmitt. His windscreen was shattered and he suffered wounds to his head, shoulder and hands from shrapnel and jagged shards of shattered Perspex. The aircraft’s communications system and compasses were put out of action in the attack and the elevator controls damaged, making the aircraft difficult to control. Although the rear gun turret was also badly damaged, the gunners managed to drive off the attacker and, saying nothing about his own wounds, Reid checked that his crew were unscathed and then flew on.

  Soon afterwards, the Lancaster was again attacked, this time by a Focke-Wulf Fw 190. It was a very unequal contest. The Fw 190 was almost twice as fast as the Lancaster, with a top speed of over 400 miles an hour, a climb rate of 2,500 feet a minute – well over three times the best the Lancaster could achieve – and its 30mm cannon were ‘powerful enough to destroy most heavy bombers with just two or three hits’.2 The German pilot raked the length of the bomber with his cannon, killing the navigator, fatally injuring the wireless operator, wounding Reid yet again and wrecking the mid-upper turret, leaving the aircraft defenceless. The oxygen system was also destroyed but, even though he was also hit in the forearm, the flight engineer kept Reid supplied with oxygen from a portable cylinder.

  Reid refused to turn back and, having memorised his course to the target, reached Düsseldorf – one of the most heavily defended targets in Germany – fifty minutes later. The failure of the communications system meant that the bomb-aimer knew nothing of Reid’s wounds, nor the casualties among his other comrades. The Lancaster’s camera showed that when the bomb-load was dropped, the aircraft was directly over the centre of the target.

  Reid then turned for home. With no navigator, he plotted a course using the Pole Star and the moon. Already badly wounded, frozen by the wind roaring through his shattered windscreen, weak from blood loss and half-blinded by the blood from his head wound running into his eyes, Reid now had to fly without oxygen, as the emergency supply had given out and, dodging heavy anti-aircraft fire over the Dutch coast, he did not want to descend below the 10,000-foot ceiling for a flight without oxygen until he was safely clear of the flak batteries that might have finished the job begun by the fighters.

  When he eventually descended to lower altitude, the warmer air caused his facial wounds to reopen, half-blinding him again with trickling blood. He kept lapsing into semi-consciousness, but the flight engineer and the bomb-aimer helped him to stay awake and the Lancaster airborne as Reid nursed his crippled aircraft back across the North Sea. He made an emergency landing at the Shipdam USAAF base in Norfolk, despite ground mist that partially obscured the runway lights. Even though half the undercarriage collapsed as he touched down, Reid brought the aircraft to a halt without it overturning or catching fire and without further injury to himself or the surviving members of his crew.

  His Victoria Cross citation stated:

  Wounded in two attacks, without oxygen, suffering severely from cold, his navigator dead, his wireless operator fatally wounded, his aircraft crippled and defenceless, Flight Lieutenant Reid showed superb courage and leadership in penetrating a further 200 miles into enemy territory to attack one of the most strongly defended targets in Germany, every additional mile increasing the hazards of the long and perilous journey home. His tenacity and devotion to duty were beyond praise.3

  After recuperating from his wounds, Reid at once volunteered to join 617 Squadron in January 1944. On his first flight with 617, he made a hash of a landing and damaged his tailplane. Leonard Cheshire told him that he blamed himself for not giving him a few circuits to get him back in the groove after the trauma of his last op before sending him off solo, but then added that he’d have to put a red endorsement in Reid’s logbook. As Reid himself noted with a rueful grin, ‘I think I’m the only pilot to get a Victoria Cross on one trip and a red endorsement on the next!’

  With his comrades, he would now be bombing the V-weapon tunnel at Rilly-la-Montagne from 12,000 feet, ensuring a clear sight of the target, whereas the Main Force would drop from 18,000 feet. When told that at the briefing for the op, Reid immediately expressed his concern, saying: ‘In that case we will be flying through their aiming point and the line of the drops.’ However, he was assured that the Main Force would not begin making their bombing runs until twenty minutes after 617 had completed theirs. The 617 Squadron aircrews were also told that their Mosquitos would be covering the necessary photography of the target, so ‘if the flak is bad, don’t bother with pictures’.4

  It was a clear, bright, sunny day and the flight to the target was incident-free. As Nick Knilans began his bomb-run, his flight engineer tapped him on the shoulder and said, ‘Look up above you, Skipper.’ Knilans’ irritation at having his bomb-run interrupted disappeared in an instant as he saw another Lancaster 250 feet above him with its bomb doors open and about to drop its own load. Knowing his own aircraft would be invisible to the crew of the one above him, Knilans swerved out of its path using full left rudder then settled on a new course for the target quickly enough for his bomb-aimer to find the aiming-point and release their Tallboy. As Knilans swung away to begin the run back to base, thanking his stars for the narrow escape from being bombed by one of his own comrades, his rear gunner shouted, ‘Skipper, one of our planes just had a bomb dropped on it.’

  From its altitude of 16,000 feet, the doomed Lancaster took four minutes to fall to earth. Knilans asked his flight engineer if he could see any parachutes. ‘Not yet,’ he said. ‘Oh! It’s breaking up! There! I see one – no two chutes. There it goes into the ground.’

  Knilans’ crew all fell silent, knowing that while two men had escaped their doomed aircraft, the other five were now dead. That aircraft had been piloted by Bill Reid, VC. As he completed his bomb-run, Reid had seen flak ahead and was ‘of a mind to turn off immediately’, but his bomb-aimer, Les Relton, called, ‘Hold it.’ The next instant, Reid felt the aircraft lurch violently. There was none of the acrid smoke or smell of gunpowder that came when hit by flak, so he knew that, as he had feared, they could only have been struck by bombs falling from above, as someone in the Main Force began bombing well ahead of their scheduled time.

  The bombs – 1,000-pounders – smashed through the Lancaster’s port wing and central fuselage, tearing out an engine, severing the control cables and fatally weakening the aircraft. When the control column went ‘loose and floppy’ Reid ordered, ‘Stand by to bale out!’ His engineer at once passed Reid his parachute pack before strapping on his own. As the aircraft’s nose dipped, sliding into a dive, Reid knew he had no means of controlling it and shouted, ‘Bale out!’

  The flight engineer, Sergeant James Norris, rushed forward, trying to get out of the escape hatch, but the aircraft had gone into a steep dive and began to spin, making it difficult for Reid to move. His one thought was to jump as soon as possible, but at first he struggled to get out of his seat because the control column was now jammed against the chute pack on his chest. He fought with the sliding windows on either side of the cabin, but neither would open. The aircraft was still spinning down in a near-vertical dive. Reid finally stru
ggled out of his seat but couldn’t get to the forward escape hatch. Then he remembered the dinghy escape hatch above and a little behind his head. He dragged himself towards it, every step a huge effort as the aircraft dived almost perpendicularly towards the ground.

  Just as he took a grip on the handle of the hatch and began to turn it, he heard banging, rattling sounds and suddenly found himself ‘in freefall’, with the only noise the whistle of the wind. The nose and cabin of the aircraft had simply disappeared, torn free from the main fuselage, and Reid had tumbled out of the hole.

  He felt for his ripcord, pulled it, and his chute opened with a savage jerk. He saw woodland beneath him, coming up quite fast, and ‘kept my legs together, as all good Scotsmen are told to do!’ He hit the canopy of a tree, slid down the main branch and hit the trunk. The impact left him with a badly broken wrist and severe bruising to his left leg, but he was otherwise unhurt and managed to work his way down the trunk to the ground.

  He hid his Mae West in the undergrowth, put a shell dressing on his broken and bleeding hand, and then began to move south, away from the sound of the delayed-action bombs that were continuing to detonate. However, he had not travelled far when he was captured by a group of German soldiers. As they were taking him to their headquarters, about a mile away, he saw the wreckage of part of his aircraft and asked them to let him look at it. The bodies of the mid-upper and rear gunners were lying on the ground alongside it. His flight engineer, Norris, had also been captured, but Reid harboured hopes that the remaining three crew members had made good their escape. ‘I was certain I was the only one trapped in the plane when spinning down. It was only that the nose of the plane came off or I’d never have lived myself.’5 Reid and Norris became PoWs, and it was only when they returned to the UK at the end of the war that they discovered that all five of their comrades had died, unable to escape from the aircraft as it plummeted to earth.6