Walter Dring had come a long way in a short time and on 25 October he found himself promoted to acting squadron leader and placed in charge of No 183 – the best choice according to all the pilots.
After the recent losses it was vital that Walter should get the squadron focused squarely on the job in hand so, on 26 October, he scheduled a full squadron formation practice during the morning and a dive-bombing attack on Poulmic/Lanveoc seaplane base, on the south side of the Brest estuary, that afternoon. With Walter leading, take-off was at 13.45 and course was set from the Lizard. The formation of eight Bombphoons skimmed the waves for twenty minutes, then climbed to 13,000ft to cross the French coast at Cameret-sur-Mer, west of Crozon, a few miles from the target. Flying across the target in echelon, they each peeled off and dived to 5,000ft, released their bombs and zoomed back up to 8,000ft to reform. Thirteen bombs were seen to explode around the hangars, mess buildings and workshops, with dust and debris rising to 1,000ft. Flak was heavy and pretty accurate for the height but fortunately no one was hit. Walter led the squadron away from the Brest defences and on the way out, swept the area Sizun-Landerneau-Landivisiau searching for enemy aircraft. None was seen and all aircraft returned to Predannack at 15.15.
* * *
Typhoon squadron commanders were constantly reviewing their techniques for carrying out these ground attack sorties. Some months earlier, the optimum size for a Typhoon formation was found to be eight aircraft. Current practice for dive-bombing attacks, such as the one mentioned above, was to do a maximum-rate ‘battle-climb’ – at around 185mph – from ‘the deck’ to the planned attack altitude of around 12–13,000ft. Sqn Ldr Dring would then order his aircraft into echelon – he preferred port echelon but it depended on circumstances – and with each pilot knowing his position in the line it was imperative – and expected – that this manoeuvre would be carried out slickly and quickly while the CO kept his eye on the target. As the formation changed to echelon the order was also given to arm the bombs. Walter would watch the target position change until it passed beneath his starboard wing, then call: ‘Target 3 o’clock below, diving now!’ Moving the control column firmly to the right and back, right rudder on, with about 130° bank his Typhoon went down in an almost vertical attack dive, nose pointing at the target – and everyone followed him at one-second intervals. Those with the hardest job were the pilots in the positions furthest from the formation leader, as the target went well past them by the time it was the last one’s turn to wing-over – and any flak gunners had had good practice on those going down before him! The 7-ton Typhoon built up speed rapidly and could exceed 400mph by the time the bomb release altitude, at say 4,000ft, was reached. Bringing the nose of the aircraft on to the aiming point, the pilot pressed the bomb release button on the end of the throttle lever and pulled back on the control column to get out of the dive and climb back up to rejoin the formation at the designated altitude. It was at this point that, depending on the severity of the pull-out, the G-force exerted enormous pressure on the pilot. On these operations it was quite normal for the more experienced pilots to pull as much ‘G’ as they could stand, often holding their breath and pulling in their stomach muscles tightly to keep the blood in their upper half, teetering on the edge of or just losing their vision, but not their consciousness, in order to regain height and get out of the worst of the flak as quickly as possible. The Typhoon was tough enough to take more G-force than its pilots could handle.
Always concerned for his pilots’ welfare and ensuring they were rested and did not do every ‘show’, Walter Dring pushed himself hard, personally leading most of the difficult operations carried out by No 183 Squadron. On 28 October, eight aircraft led by Walter flew to RAF Warmwell to mount another attack on Nos 5 and 6 dry docks at Cherbourg, where the 6,000-ton ship, attacked previously, was reported to be berthed. This operation was to coincide with attacks by Whirlwind and Boston bombers, and the Typhoons, armed with two 500lb GP bombs, were to bomb five minutes after the Whirlwinds. Take-off from Warmwell was at 14.30. Standard dive-bombing procedure was carried out from 12,000ft, with bomb release at 7,000ft, but with heavy flak coming up, no direct hits on the ship were observed. On the next day, the 29th, Dring led eight Bombphoons across the Channel, this time to hit Brest/Guipavas aerodrome with two 500lb bombs each.
A big operation was mounted on 2 November with Walter leading a formation of ten aircraft – six Bombphoons and four fighters for flak suppression – on a shipping strike to Ushant. Here, flying at about 250ft between the island and the mainland, and 5 miles west of Camaret, they sighted two merchant vessels of 2,000 tons and 800 tons, steaming westwards in line astern. Walter ordered the anti-flak fighters to attack the larger vessel, while he split up the bombers into two groups to make runs on both ships simultaneously. The bombing runs were made at wave-top height, aiming the aircraft directly at the ship’s side, and all aircraft were met with a hail of 20mm flak fired at them from both ships. With tracer zipping almost like a funnel towards each attacker, the judgement of when to hit the release button or pull up to clear the masts and superstructure was far from easy. Walter led the way in and then circled while the rest made their runs. Someone must have judged it right because the larger ship was seen on fire and possibly sinking, while the smaller one was enveloped in smoke. However, JP184 flown by Fg Off Allan Palmer was hit by flak. Palmer’s wingman saw the aircraft pull up to about 200ft, then the port wing dropped and it crashed into the sea. Palmer’s body was not recovered.
Photo portrait of Sqn Ldr Walter Dring DFC when CO of No 183 Squadron, 1944. (John & Susan Rowe, Dring Collection)
On 5 November Walter Dring was in JP136 leading a dive-bombing attack on Poulmic airfield near Brest. Armed with two 500lb bombs each, his eight aircraft flew at low level towards the French coast but when they were about to climb to altitude they entered 10/10ths cloud at 2,000ft with the top at 4,500ft. Walter decided it was impossible to bomb at that level and aborted the show. Bomb-arming switches were turned off and the bombs released into the sea but Plt Off Arthur Napier, flying as No 3 in the leading flight, nearly went the same way as the bombs. He was flying so close to the surface of the sea that his prop blades hit the water and he was engulfed by a cloud of spray. He managed to stay airborne and landed at Predannack with bent prop-tips, damaged bomb racks and loads of vibration.
Having been flying almost constantly up to this point Walter decided it was time to let someone else lead some operations for a change. In Flt Lt Allan McAdam AFC, Walter had a worthy deputy who could be relied upon to lead the squadron in an equally aggressive way. Walter returned to the fray on 21 November in JP128, leading eight Bombphoons and two anti-flak fighters on an unproductive armed shipping recco to the Ushant area.
It seems likely during the short period Walter was not flying ops that he was away getting the latest information about the use of rocket-powered projectiles (RPs) for the Typhoon. The standard RP eventually used by Typhoons consisted of a metal warhead, 6in in diameter, filled with high explosive weighing 60lb, fitted to one end of a 3in metal tube packed with cordite propellant that was fired by an electrical circuit. Around the rear or exhaust end of the tube were four small stabilising fins. When ignited electrically, the cordite burned to produce a jet of rapidly expanding gas that forced the projectile to slide off its rail at ever-increasing speed through the air, until all the propellant was burned up. The Typhoon was fitted with four rails under each wing to carry the RPs, one per rail. Being propelled by a rocket, the force of impact was greater than that achieved by a conventional bomb. The rocket principle also caused no recoil effect on the aeroplane and together with its four 20mm cannon, an RP-equipped Typhoon represented a highly manoeuvrable and potent aerial artillery platform. It took some skill to aim the projectiles properly. The cockpit reflector sight had two settings, one of which allowed for the RPs to be positioned lower than the guns, but the pilot also had to make allowance for trajectory drop after firing.
No 183
Squadron had its first opportunity to try out this new weapon on 22 November 1943 when Walter Dring, flying RP-armed JP136, led ten aircraft on an armed shipping recco sortie to the area of Pointe du Raz. Plt Off Harbutt was in the only other RP-armed Typhoon, JP213, while the remaining eight acted as fighter cover. The crossing to Ushant was made down on the deck and the formation turned east, soon coming across a juicy target. One mile west of Cap de la Chevre, a 4,000-ton vessel was sighted sailing south-south-west escorted by no fewer than seven minesweepers. With visibility deteriorating, 7/10ths cloud at 1,000ft lowering to 600ft and with frequent heavy rain, Walter ordered the fighters to circle out of range while he and Harbutt each dived at the merchant ship firing all their RPs in a single pass. During the dives, flak of all calibres came up at them from every vessel, but probably because the Typhoons had come upon the convoy so rapidly, its gunners were out of luck and the two Typhoons escaped unscathed. Equally, no RP hits were seen either and the Typhoons disappeared into the murk heading for home.
Keen to get the hang of the RPs, Sqn Ldr Dring went out at 08.15 the next morning to the same area off Ushant, leading eight Typhoons in JP209. Two Typhoons were armed with RPs – one of which was Walter’s – while the rest acted as anti-flak cover. Turning towards the French coast, two ships of about 4,000 tons each were sighted. These looked like flak-ships and when intense gunfire started to come up, this was quickly confirmed. Everything from multiple pom-poms, 20mm and even 3.7in shells made the attack a dangerous enterprise, but flanked by fighters making cannon-strafe passes, the two RP aircraft fired their projectiles and everyone emerged unharmed. Neither was any damage done to the flak-ships. An attempt was made to repeat this scenario during the afternoon of the next day, with Walter leading a formation of four Bombphoons and six anti-flak fighters into the Goulet. However, the weather was poor, the sea very rough and there was nothing doing this time, so the formation returned, minus bombs, to base.
November the 26th was a busy day. Taking off at 08.45, Flt Lt McAdam led the squadron back to the Goulet but had no success and was back by 09.50. At 16.40 No 10 Group mounted a Ramrod to bomb Martinvast airfield and No 183 Squadron led by Sqn Ldr Dring provided eight Bombphoons, each armed with two 500lb medium-capacity (MC) bombs with instantaneous fuses. Course was set from Harrowbeer, flying at sea level for twenty minutes, then climbing to 11,000ft over the French coast just south of Cap de Flamanville. Following a railway line the formation reached the target which was dive-bombed from 11,000ft down to 6,000ft amid moderate flak. It was a source of great irritation that despite all bombs falling within the target area, all failed to explode! Flt Lt McAdam took the squadron back to the Goulet next day and had better success against a couple of minesweepers, both of which were strafed and one hit on the waterline.
Two 45-gallon drop tanks were fitted to each of No 183’s six Typhoon fighters for a long-range Rodeo sortie to the Kerlin-Bastard area of the Bay of Biscay. In company with ten Typhoons from No 257 Squadron, and two Spitfire squadrons making up the wing formation, it was an operation designed to tempt the Luftwaffe into the air for a fight. Taking off at 14.00, the Typhoons flew in two groups of eight aircraft at sea level until they reached the target area, then climbed to 8,000ft where, with visibility of 25 miles, they circled in the crisp, clear air while increasing their altitude to 12,000ft. The Spitfires provided top cover at 20,000ft waiting for the opportunity to drop on the enemy should he be so bold as to appear. In the event it all fizzled out and apart from seeing a couple of Me 410s on the airfield and a stationary 8,000-ton merchant vessel near Île de Groix, no enemy aircraft came anywhere near the Typhoons and all returned safely to base. Actually, the outward journey itself was not without incident. There was no cockpit fuel gauge for the drop tanks, so after taking off on main tanks, a signal was given in the air for everyone to switch to the first drop tank and run on it for a pre-briefed period of time. Another signal from the formation leader prompted a switch-over to the second tank, which would again be used for the set period of time. At a third signal the pilots would switch to the main tank and jettison the drop tanks. This latter point was reached near Lorient and the wing leader, Wg Cdr Denys Gillam, duly gave the order to drop the tanks. This was all very well but he seemed to have forgotten that eight aircraft of No 257 Squadron were in front of and slightly above the formation of six 183 plus two 257 aircraft. On his signal, sixteen drop tanks from the first group whizzed back towards the second group, which had to take rapid and violent evasive manoeuvres to miss these incoming aluminium missiles! The leader of the second formation was Walter Dring in JR128 ‘S’, who turned the air blue with his protest to the Wingco at this bombardment. The Wingco at least had the good grace to apologise.
Things looked up on 18 December when Sqn Ldr Dring led eight Typhoon fighters with drop tanks on a long-range escort sortie to Concarneau in the Bay of Biscay. Take-off was at 11.05 and the Typhoons met up with a squadron of torpedo-carrying Beaufighters from Coastal Command. The Beaufighters took up line astern and the Typhoons flew four on each side of the line. Under a 3,000ft overcast sky with rain showers, keeping station on the slower and heavily laden torpedo bombers was tricky, and being responsible for navigation, the bombers took a wide course around Brest to the west of Ushant to approach Concarneau at 800ft from the south-west. The target was a convoy creeping along close inshore, comprising a 6,000-ton merchant vessel escorted by two destroyers and two E-boats. The Beaufighters attacked the merchant vessel and two torpedo hits were seen. Going in with the first of the bombers, Flt Lt S.J. Lovell and Fg Off Peter Brett attacked the ship with cannon fire and broke away when the torpedoes exploded, while the rest of the squadron made dummy passes at the targets as each of the other Beaufighters made their runs. This tactic was successful in putting off the enemy gunners because, despite being fired upon from all the ships and from gun emplacements behind Concarneau town, none of the attackers was shot down, although Fg Off C.N. Walley made a wheels-up landing back at Predannack because he had a flak hole through his wing and thought a tyre had burst. This sortie lasted two hours and thirty-five minutes.
‘No-Ball’ was the code name for V–1 launch sites in the occupied countries. These launch sites for the Fieseler Fi 103 (V–1) pulse-jet-propelled missile, colloquially known as a ‘Doodlebug’ or ‘Buzz-bomb’, were relatively small constructions often built in wooded areas for concealment, making them difficult to spot from the air. The sites contained a concrete, ski-shaped missile launch ramp and associated buildings, and No 186 Squadron, among others, was tasked several times to make dive-bomb attacks on some sites under construction. The missiles, Hitler’s first ‘V’ weapon, had a warhead of 1,900lb of explosive, a range of 150 miles and the ramps were directed mainly – although not entirely – at England and London in particular. The first V–1 missiles were not launched against England until 13 June 1944, but sites were being built prolifically along the Channel strip of France, Belgium and Holland many months prior to operational use. Once this new weapon had been identified and linked with the construction sites discovered in France, it became a target for Allied bombers of all types.
One such operation was mounted on 22 December, when Walter Dring, flying JR128 ‘S’, personally led two sorties that day to one of these ‘ski’ sites being built near Cherbourg. Taking off from RAF Harrowbeer, to which the squadron had flown for the operation, at 11.00, leading a formation of seven Bombphoons from No 183 Squadron, Walter reached and, in a clear sky, identified the No-Ball target near Maupertus at 11.32. With No 193 Squadron acting as top cover, Walter ordered his squadron into echelon at 10,000ft altitude and led the wing-over on to the target. He released his two 500-pounders at 5,000ft in a dive before zooming back up to reform his aircraft for the trip home. German flak was sporadic and inaccurate but only one bomb-burst in the target area was spotted. They landed back at 12.25 and after a debrief, a second sortie was planned against a different No-Ball target in the same area, this time at full wing strength. No 183 s
upplied eleven Bombphoons and No 164 a further five, while Nos 193 and 266 Squadrons provided sixteen fighters to act as top cover for the bombers. Take-off was at 15.00.
The weather was fine until the French coast when 8/10ths to 10/10ths cloud south of Cherbourg made it impossible to identify the new target. Turning the formation westwards, Walter Dring spotted, through a gap in the clouds, the construction site he had bombed that morning and decided to bomb that instead. One of the pilots flying with Walter on that op, Fg Off Peter Brett, wrote a vivid description of the dive-bombing attack:
As we approached the target area, the cloud cover was almost complete. However the CO [Dring] put us in echelon port and then started a slow turn to starboard to see if he could pick up the target. He managed to spot what we were aiming for through a small hole in the clouds and tightened up his turn to keep it in sight, as he called the ‘arm bombs’ and ‘diving now’ orders. I was flying at number two to the leader of the second four of the second squadron [eight Typhoon aircraft was, in the light of practical experience, considered to be the optimum number for a ‘squadron’ formation; therefore, for the duration of this op, for example, Peter Brett in JR145 ‘A’, Fg Off Foster in JP973 ‘E’ and Flt Sgt Grant in JP601 ‘L’, all from 183 Squadron, became temporarily attached to the five Typhoons from No 193 Squadron, referred to here as the ‘second squadron’.] which made me fourteenth of the sixteen aircraft to dive. It also meant that I had to keep on opening up the throttle in order to keep up as I was on the far left hand end of a string of aircraft turning right. By the time that the aircraft in front of me peeled off into the dive, I was nearly at full throttle and banked steeply to keep in formation. I just managed to glimpse the target through the small hole in the cloud as I peeled over into the dive but had to pull over almost inverted to get round on to the line of the bombing dive. As soon as I was in the dive I realised that I was going much too fast but there was nothing I could do except throttle back in fine pitch and hope that the following pilot would be able to keep clear. I concentrated on lining up with the target, released my bombs and pulled out. By this time I was experienced enough to pull the maximum ‘G’ I could stand and had learned that this could be increased by putting my feet up on the ‘high’ rudder pedals, curling up into a ball and yelling as loudly as possible. All of which tended to push blood up into the head and thus help counteract the effects of ‘G’ force. Even so, my vision went immediately and I blacked out almost completely. When my vision returned I was going almost straight up and just had time to see my airspeed was well over 450mph, before I was back in cloud. Before I had time to settle onto instruments I was through the cloud layer and found I was shooting up past the rest of the formation, although my airspeed was bleeding off rapidly and I quickly rejoined. The trip back was uneventful but I was unsure whether I had been hit by flak or not. The aircraft seemed noisier than usual and I was having to use very slightly more throttle and higher revs to keep station. On landing at Harrowbeer, the local ground crew drew my attention to the undersides of both wings. Several rivets had ‘popped’ at the point where the wing ‘cranked’ and this had allowed the metal skinning to pull away from the rib and left a gap of a centimetre. This had been enough to cause a slight increase in drag and change the noise and feel of the aircraft in flight. As far as anybody could tell, the only way this could have happened is that I had far exceeded the maximum speed and consequently the maximum ‘G’ on pullout, which had actually bent the wings! I was considered to be extremely lucky to have survived.
They Spread Their Wings Page 12
