Fortress England

by Robert Jackson

  If the people of Liverpool thought this was bad enough, there was far worse to come. On Saturday night, nine Heinkel 111s of III/KG26 under the command of Major Viktor von Lossberg took off from Poix near Amiens and set course for the city. Each aircraft was equipped with a radio navigation aid called Y-Apparatus; a ground station at Cherbourg transmitted a high-frequency radio beam which the bombers followed. Normally, the ‘pathfinder’ Heinkels operated at between 9,000 and 12,000 feet, but on this occasion, in order to receive the signals for as long as possible, they went up to 22,000.

  Radar tracked them as they crossed the Channel, and as they came in over the south coast the Beaufighters pounced. One Heinkel fell in flames over Somerset, another broke up in mid-air near Chichester and a third, appropriately, crashed in the Corporation scrapyard at Arundel.

  The others flew on, and although the radio signals petered out as the bombers passed over Wrexham, thirty miles south-east of Liverpool, the city was now only seven minutes’ flying time away and the crews had no difficulty in locating their objective. Ignoring decoy fires that had been lit on the Dee Estuary, they dropped their loads of incendiaries and then turned away, speeding for the Channel and safety.

  Behind them came the main bomber stream: 293 He 111s and Ju 88s of Luftflotte 3. Of these, 218 attacked Liverpool, causing huge fires in the docks and sinking several ships.

  One ship under attack gave cause for particular concern. She was the SS Malakand, and she was laden with 1,000 tons of high-explosive bombs. Soon after the attack started, a partly inflated barrage balloon fell over her deck and started to blaze fiercely. Under the direction of the ship’s master, Captain Howard Kinley, the crew managed to bring the fire under control after fifteen minutes, and also dealt with some incendiaries which fell on the vessel. All the while, HE bombs and incendiaries were exploding on the dock sheds nearby.

  By midnight, the Malakand was surrounded by a sea of flame from burning dockyard buildings on both sides. One huge fire spread to the ship itself and soon enveloped her from stem to stern, forcing the crew to abandon her. They and members of the Auxiliary Fire Service continued to fight the flames all night, but after nine hours there was a massive explosion as part of the vessel’s deadly cargo blew up, wrecking the dock and completing the destruction, already begun by the Luftwaffe, of acres of surrounding sheds and warehouses. Steel plates from the stricken ship were later found two and a half miles away. Captain Kinley and several of his crew were injured, but it was a miracle that only four people were killed.

  More of the bombs stacked inside the ship’s white-hot hulk detonated at intervals over the next three days. Had the whole cargo gone up at once, the devastation and loss of life would have been indescribable.

  As it was, 479 people were killed that night in Liverpool and the surrounding area. One large HE bomb fell in the back courtyard of Mill Road Infirmary, completely demolishing three large hospital buildings and damaging the rest; 62 people were killed, half of them patients, and 70 more seriously injured.

  The Mersey anti-aircraft barrage hurled 6,000 rounds of heavy shells at the attackers during the night and shot nothing down, although one Heinkel fell victim to a barrage balloon cable. One Junkers 88 had to make a forced landing in Norfolk as a result of engine failure, but of the nine German aircraft that failed to return, seven were brought down by night-fighters, five by Beaufighters and two by Boulton Paul Defiants.

  Others had narrow escapes, as one German crew member later described:

  ‘We were over the North Sea when suddenly our radio operator shouted ‘Night fighter!’ It was one of their new, very fast fighters. We had hardly grasped the meaning of his words when a hail of bullets was pumped into our aircraft. Indescribable chaos surrounded us immediately. We were blinded by tracer bullets and deafened by the whistle of projectiles.

  Our pilot tried an evasive manoeuvre but time and again, with astounding courage and insistence, the excellent enemy pilot pumped more and more lead into us. Six times he attacked us from below, but never allowed his machine to come within the range of our guns.

  The bomb-aimer was wounded and lay motionless near his sight. Our pilot attempted once more to shake off the British attacker, diving almost to sea level, and at last succeeded. But one of our motors was out of action. Still, we were now left undisturbed. We jettisoned our bombs, and flew home.

  We had great difficulty in dressing the wounds of our comrade in the darkness, but we managed to make a successful landing, and soon our comrade was transferred to hospital. Later, we counted the hits which our machine had sustained. We found no fewer than one hundred and seven holes.’

  Other British ports were hit that night. Ten people were killed and 2,000 made homeless in Barrow-in-Furness; casualties were heavy on Tyneside, where a bomb scored a direct hit on an air-raid shelter and killed 76; 20 people lost their lives in attacks on Sunderland and West Hartlepool; and a similar number were killed in raids on Portsmouth and Gosport. But it was Liverpool that suffered the most.

  Dawn rose on a devastated city. Its streets were blocked with fallen masonry, carpeted with millions of shards of broken glass and festooned with miles of snaking rubber fire hoses. The air itself seemed somehow altered: sharp and acrid, it stung the eyes and pinched the nostrils. A great pall of smoke and dust hung over everything, and a black blizzard of burnt paper from stricken shops and offices blew across the city to settle in suburban gardens. One eyewitness told how he:

  ‘…walked along some of the scores of fissured streets where gas and water mains were ruptured, where sleep-starved rescue teams toiled and scrabbled among rubble that had been homes — streets where people, some very young, some very old, drifted in trauma through a haze of smoke and dust and stench from burst sewers. I saw tortured bodies of carthorses that had been dragged from blazing stables, then abandoned in heaps because there were humans to extricate. I saw shambling cows released by bombs from back-street byres, bellowing to be milked. I saw a baby’s body in the splintered debris of its cradle.

  I saw some of the many hundreds in Liverpool and in adjoining Bootle who had lost a home and everything in it, those frantic for news of a loved one, those in anguish because they had received it.’

  This was Liverpool at daybreak, on Sunday, 4 May 1941.

  *

  In contrast to the blood-red sun that glared evilly through the smoke of Liverpool’s fires, the morning sun that rose over Bordeaux shone through an atmosphere that was fresh and clean, filled with the song of birds. It was an atmosphere of rural tranquillity that was soon to be abruptly shattered.

  Eight aircraft came roaring out of the north-eastern sky, flying in two waves of four. They thundered at low level over Bordeaux-Merignac airfield, then peeled off smartly into the circuit, coming in to land one by one with a precise interval between each. Oberstleutnant Martin Harlinghausen, who had travelled down from Lorient to greet the newcomers, smiled his approval.

  “Excellent airmanship,” he commented. “That is good. A Staffel whose discipline is good will fight well. Do you not agree, Fritz?”

  Fritz Meister nodded. He was still recovering from the nervous exhaustion caused by the nightmare flight back to Bordeaux a few days earlier, and haunted by the loss of all his aircraft but one.

  “They will be a valuable addition to our firepower, Herr Oberstleutnant,” he said, looking appreciatively at the aircraft as they taxied in. They were Junkers 88s, but there was something different about them. Instead of the transparent noses of the bomber version, these aircraft had ‘solid’ noses, and the muzzles of cannon and machine-guns protruded from them.

  They were Ju 88C-2s, originally converted to a fighter configuration for intruder operations over England. Operating from Bordeaux, they would provide an antidote for the RAF’s Bristol Beaufighters, which had suddenly begun to appear on patrol off the French coast, ranging as far south as the Bay of Biscay. Nothing else had the necessary combination of range, speed and manoeuvrability to cope with th
e twin-engined British fighter.

  Admiral Raeder, Meister thought, must have pulled numerous strings with his Luftwaffe counterparts to have these valuable aircraft assigned to the Atlantic Air Command. But there was more to come.

  Even before the crews of the newly-arrived aircraft had shut down their engines at their dispersal points, more aircraft came thundering in from the north. These, too, were Ju 88s, but the standard dive-bomber version. Meister counted eighteen of them as they came in to land, their BMW radial engines making a fearsome racket.

  “There you are, Fritz,” said Harlinghausen, grinning. “That came as a surprise, didn’t it? Now we have real striking power.”

  Meister glanced sideways at his superior officer. Something was obviously going on that he knew nothing about. All this activity pointed to a massive strengthening of both offensive and defensive capability on the Biscay coast. He wondered if the battlecruisers at Brest were going to break out into the Atlantic under cover of a big air umbrella.

  He wished that he could have the opportunity to fly one of the Ju 88 fighters, and take a crack at the Beaufighters which he knew had been responsible for the death of his squadron. The previous evening he had seen photographs, brought back by a reconnaissance aircraft, which had revealed the presence of the British fighters on an airfield in Cornwall, and a German agent in Ireland had signalled their brief visit to an airfield in the north. Now they were back in Cornwall and flying patrols as far out as Biscay. So far, no German aircraft had been lost in this area, but Meister knew with a feeling of unease that if the patrols were allowed to continue unmolested, the anti-shipping Heinkels that formed part of KG40’s bomber force at Bordeaux would be in for a hard time. The reinforcement had come not a moment too soon.

  Other eyes, too, had witnessed the arrival of the two formations of Ju 88s. That night, from the comparative security of a tiny room hidden in a church steeple in Bordeaux, radio contact would be made with a specially-equipped Hudson which, every night, cruised high over the Channel between certain hours. It formed a vital link in the Intelligence chain which, when forged completely, would give the Allies ascendency in the Atlantic war. Only a handful of people would ever know how vital that link would be.

  Chapter Twelve

  The Air Ministry, London — Friday, 9 May 1941

  “The Prime Minister is very concerned,” Air Commodore Glendenning said quietly. “He has an excellent grasp of naval affairs, and he believes this maximum-effort offensive by the Germans is definitely linked to forthcoming operations by their fleet. Almost without exception, their heaviest attacks have been directed against our ports, and they have been in progress all week. Look at the map.”

  Armstrong did so, noting that a number of points around the coasts of Britain were heavily circled in red. Glendenning pointed to each of them in turn.

  “First of all, Liverpool, last Saturday. Then, on Sunday night, Belfast, with secondary attacks on Liverpool and Barrow, not to mention smaller raids around the coast. As far as we can tell, about four hundred and fifty aircraft were involved. The shipyards at Belfast took a real pasting, and we managed to shoot down five aircraft. Five! That’s hardly likely to deter them, is it?”

  The air commodore’s index finger moved eastwards across the Irish Sea.

  “On Monday and Tuesday it was Glasgow, with the Greenock shipyards as the main target area. They were hard hit. Again, there were smaller secondary raids. Anti-Aircraft Command blasted off thousands of rounds, Fighter Command put up three hundred sorties, and we shot down three aircraft. To make the figures even worse, a German intruder shot down one of our Defiants. Luckily, the crew baled out.

  “On Wednesday Liverpool and Hull got clobbered — especially Hull, where I understand the town centre has been wiped out. On the credit side, the defences seem to have been a bit better organised and we got thirteen of the bastards. It’s still nowhere near enough. Last night, just for a change, they left the ports alone — apart from Hull — and attacked Sheffield and Nottingham. They lost seven, four to Defiants.”

  The Boulton Paul Defiant, its sole armament four .303 machine-guns in a power-operated turret, had been a disaster as a day fighter, but was performing well against the night raiders. In just over a week of operations the Defiants had shot down fifteen enemy bombers, two more than the Beaufighters.

  “Your Beaufighter Flight has been carrying out regular patrols of the Biscay area, Ken?” Glendenning asked abruptly.

  “Yes, sir. Ever since it returned from Northern Ireland.”

  “And your crews have encountered no enemy aircraft?”

  Armstrong shook his head. “No, sir. They shot up a couple of minesweepers, though, and left one of them on fire.”

  The air commodore frowned. “I find the absence of enemy aircraft odd. Very odd indeed. Bordeaux aerodrome is stiff with them. After we received intelligence that a reinforcement of Junkers 88s had flown in we sent out a PR Spitfire to confirm it, and sure enough, our people counted twenty-six of them. That’s a substantial force, and you’d think they’d be doing something with it.”

  There was a knock on the door, and in response to Glendenning’s command a section officer of the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force came in, bearing a sealed buff envelope which she handed to the air commodore. He waited until she had left before opening it. He put on a pair of half-moon glasses, extracted the envelope’s contents and studied them carefully before replacing them.

  “The latest report on the Pandora trials,” he said. “You’ll remember those?”

  “I do indeed, sir,” Armstrong said, “and I’m glad we didn’t have to do them.”

  Pandora was a scheme, dreamed up by God knew who, which involved a twin-engined bomber flying directly above a German night bomber and dropping an explosive charge on it. In the end, the job of testing it had been given to 93 Squadron, which was equipped with American-built Douglas Havocs.

  “Well, the concept was tried out operationally the night before last,” Glendenning said. “And, as you correctly predicted, it didn’t work.”

  Armstrong made no comment. Equally as unworkable, to his mind, was a plan to operate Havocs equipped with searchlights in conjunction with Hurricane day-fighters. The Havoc, which was radar-equipped, was supposed to detect and illuminate the target, which would then be shot down by the accompanying fighter. At least, that was the theory. No, Armstrong told himself, the solution to the night-bomber problem was the fast, heavily-armed night-fighter, and already there were rumours of something coming along that would be better even than the Beaufighter.

  In fact, it was much more than a rumour, for Armstrong had seen one of the prototypes flying during a visit to the Aeroplane and Armament Experimental Establishment at Boscombe Down. A truly beautiful aircraft, powered by two Rolls-Royce Merlins, its airframe was made of balsa wood, spruce and plywood, which meant that it would be light and fast. It was being developed as a reconnaissance aircraft, light bomber and night-fighter. It was built by de Havilland, and they were going to call it the Mosquito.

  Aircraft such as these would eventually triumph over the night-bomber, but it would take time. As it was, with the exception of the handful of aircraft equipped with radar, night-fighting was a matter of chance. But there were plenty of pilots who were prepared to take that chance, taking to the night sky in their Spitfires or Hurricanes, and Armstrong had met one of them in April, during his short stay at Tangmere.

  Flight Lieutenant Richard Stevens had come slanting down out of the pre-dawn sky to refuel his Hurricane after a long night patrol over the Channel. Over breakfast, Armstrong had learned a little about his fellow officer, but not much. It had been left to others to tell the story.

  When Stevens joined the RAF on the outbreak of war at the age of thirty — the maximum for aircrew entry — he was already a veteran pilot, having spent some time flying the cross-Channel route with cargoes of mail and newspapers. He had amassed some 400 hours’ flying time at night and in all weather conditions,
and his accumulated skill was soon to be put to good use.

  Stevens’s career as a fighter pilot began at an age when many other pilots were finished with operational flying. His first squadron was No. 151, which he joined in October 1940 at the tail-end of the Battle of Britain, just as the Germans were beginning to switch their main attacks from daytime to night.

  It was in one of these early night attacks that Stevens’s family died, turning him into a dedicated killer.

  No. 151 Squadron, then equipped with Hurricanes, was a day-fighter unit; its task ended when darkness fell. Night after night, as the enemy bombers droned towards London, Stevens would sit alone out on Manston airfield and watch the red glare of fires and the flicker of searchlights on the horizon, brooding and cursing the fact that the Hurricanes were not equipped for night-fighting. At last, one day in December, he could stand the frustration no longer. He asked his commanding officer for permission to fly a lone night sortie over London, and it was granted.

  His early night patrols were disappointing, for several nights running, although the Manston controller assured him that the sky was filled with enemy bombers, Stevens saw nothing. Then, on the night of 15 January 1941, he knocked two raiders — a Dornier 17 and a Heinkel 111 — from the sky, an exploit that earned him the Distinguished Flying Cross.

  By this time No. 151 Squadron was beginning to re-equip with the Defiant, but Stevens stuck doggedly to his Hurricane, stalking his victims through the night sky, aided only by bursting anti-aircraft shells, searchlights and his own exceptional eyesight. Despite the loss of his family, he felt no special hatred for the crews of the bombers he was shooting down — they were airmen like himself, following orders and doing a difficult job. Sometimes, he felt a surge of pity for the young men he was killing as he poured bullets into a bomber’s shattered cockpit. But he loathed Hitler and the Nazis, and the thought of what it would mean if Britain were overrun overwhelmed any other emotion except, perhaps, sudden elation as he watched his victim fall in flames.