Even at 5,000 feet in the spruce forests and meadows on the slopes of the Rhône River valley in the Swiss Alps, 12 July was a very warm day. It was the summer holiday season and many families with children like 14-year-old Frédéric Haldimann were enjoying the stimulating mountain air in villages perched in the valleys running south along the Rhône. Sion, the capital of the canton of Valais with its population of about 10,000 and the adjoining airfield occasionally used by the Swiss Air Force lay amongst the vineyards shimmering in the July heat. On more than one occasion during that spring and summer, the deep quiet of the nights had reverberated from the deep and regular drone of aircraft engines, a constant reminder of Switzerland’s close proximity to Germany and Italy. Dusk that evening brought the usual marked drop in temperature as the western horizon was invaded by menacing clouds. The air was sultry and it was more difficult than usual to marshal into bed the children in the Haldimann’s small summer house, but finally the candle had been snuffed and a deep quiet had once again descended on the mountains. A few hours later Frédéric was awakened by the distant rumbling of an approaching storm. Gradually the humming drone of hundreds of aircraft engines could be heard in between the thunder. After a short sojourn in Main Force operations, 295 Lancasters of 1, 5 and 8 Groups were heading for Turin again. Their outward route was directly across occupied France to a turning point marked by PFF over Lake Annecy south-west of Geneva in France and from there on an easterly heading across the French/Italian Alps to the target in the Po Valley. Adverse conditions forced 16 Lancasters to abort the operation rather than trying to climb over the Alps. The rest continued on, but at Lancaster operating altitudes, the upper winds had shifted from northwesterly tailwinds to south-west and picked up speed, so a number of aircraft drifted over Switzerland across the Jura Mountains towards the foothills of the Swiss Alps and into more developing thunderstorms. Suddenly, the night was rent by a flash of intense light followed by a sound, which seemed sharper than the previous thunderclaps. With eyes wide open but heavy with sleep, Frédéric Haldimann saw behind curtains of heavy rain as the thunderstorm broke overhead, a deep purple glow near the ridge of the next mountain and he heard the faint crackling of exploding ammunition.
Betty, a 20-year-old WAAF driver, had always been single-minded. When she had signed up with the WAAF in 1940 it had caused trouble as her father thought that she should help with the war effort from home. Her family ran three quarries in and around Sheffield producing Ganister, a clay-like material used to line the high-tensile crucibles that were used for making steel. But her new life was a major shock after a sheltered life in a small village attending the local school and on to Art College in Sheffield. Eventually she found herself in a Nissen hut housing 16 girls from very mixed backgrounds. It was a great leveller and soon they were all queuing for terrible food and hobnobbing with the drinkers at the NAAFI. She was the first WAAF at Castle Donnington. There were 600 airmen building an aerodrome and she was the only qualified driver to start with. A few days later two more girls arrived and they became her best friends. At the dinner dances around Xmas and New Year the men were queuing up for a dance as the females were in such short supply. Betty was spoiled rotten!
By now she was driving a ‘crew bus’ taking the lads out to the ‘kites’. The planes were the mighty Lancasters. ‘They flew to Berlin every night and returned in full what the German bombers had done to us at home!’ she recalled. Betty had also got engaged to her first love – Pilot Officer Eric Hawkins, a Lancaster navigator, and they were due to be married. On the night of 12/13 July, two days before their wedding, Eric was navigator on U-Uncle on 103 Squadron that took off from Elsham Wolds at 22.15 for Turin.
The main weight of the raid fell just north of the centre of the city. Over the target, conditions were excellent with no cloud and very good visibility; so much so that one crew commented on the novel experience of being able to clearly identify features of the town lay-out. The crews were unanimous in praising the PFF technique, the only criticism being that it was slightly late in starting. Visual identification of the two rivers and the town confirmed the accuracy of the attack which seems to have gone very well right from the commencement when marking and bombing was particularly described as both accurate and concentrated. As the attack developed numerous fires were observed and although in the later stages some scatter had developed, large areas in the north of the town and in the triangle formed by the Rivers Po and Dora were reported as being a mass of fire with much black smoke up to very great heights. Large explosions were reported and the two biggest of these accompanied by bursts of flame were at 01.57 and 02.00 hours. Defences in the target area were not very troublesome and one crew in 1 Group described them as ‘puerile’. The heavy flak was stated to have ceased about halfway through the attack. There was a moderate amount of light flak and also 50 searchlights whose operation seemed to have been particularly haphazard.
Thirteen Lancasters, including Z-Zebra flown by Squadron Leader John Dering Nettleton VC, were lost. After a brief spell instructing with 1661 HCU and being promoted to Wing Commander, the South African had returned to command 44 Squadron at Dunholme Lodge in January 1943. Nettleton’s Lancaster was shot down by a German night fighter over the English Channel on his return. All seven on the crew were lost without trace; their names added to those on the Runnymede Memorial. Nettleton’s was one of thirteen Lancasters that failed to return from the raid on Turin.
At Bottesford all except three Lancasters on 467 Squadron RAAF were home safe. There was no word from Flight Lieutenant Bob Gibbs and the crew on B-Baker or Flying Officer Graham Douglas Mitchell RAAF and the crew on T-Tommy, which had taken off from Bottesford at 22.49. The aircraft had hit high-tension wires and crashed on a Swiss mountainside. All the crew were buried with full military honours at Vevy on the shores of Lake Geneva. L-Lucy too was overdue but after a long delay Pilot Officer Cedric Arthur Chapman RAAF called in. He was flying with no elevator, had only 15 minutes of fuel remaining and wanted to land immediately. He said that he had practiced landing on cloud on the way back and thought that there was no other fault that would stop him using his limited control to land. He had no choice but to try to land at Bottesford, as he did not have enough fuel to reach an airfield with a longer ‘crash’ runway or to climb and let his crew bail out. At 22.48 hours Chapman brought Lucy in perfectly but suddenly the complete tail plane broke off and the rest of the aircraft crashed and instantly burst into flames. All the crew perished.
At Elsham Wolds no word was received from U-Uncle flown by Flying Officer Harold Richmond Graham RCAF. He and all his crew were lost without trace. Eric Hawkins’ was one of the seven names added to those on the Runnymede Memorial. The Pope asked for a search for the aircraft and it was found 18 months later complete with the skeletons of the crew. Betty later received a letter from the Papal Office confirming the aeroplane number.3
A few days after the Turin raid, Frédéric Haldimann set off on a hike to find the site of the aircraft that had crashed on the mountain near his home. The Swiss Army removed twelve truckloads of wreckage including a fuel tank with two holes caused by AA fire. A Swiss flak battery near the Col du Marchairuz on the Jura Mountains had reported firing on unidentified aircraft and hits had been observed. Some explosive bombs were jettisoned near the hamlet of Surpierre in the canton of Vaud without causing much damage or victims. It is assumed that Flying Officer Mitchell decided to press on to the marked turning point in spite of the adverse weather conditions. Still on the original heading, they overflew south western Switzerland while drifting to the northeast. They penetrated over the Rhône Valley, trying to identify the turning point at Lake Annecy but may have mistaken Lake Léman for the waypoint. Having lost altitude in the process and finding themselves trapped between rising ground and lit-up Cumulonimbus thunderclouds, they flew a race-track course, dropped a flare and jettisoned their bomb load including a 4,000lb cookie in an attempt to lighten their aircraft. Moments later T-Tommy brushed its
port wing against the side of a north-south mountain ridge at approximately 6,000 feet, swung violently to port and slammed onto the ground, losing its No. 4 engine in the process, which was flung 700 metres away and caught fire. Only the body of Flight Sergeant Hugh Bolger the Australian tail-gunner had escaped the fury of the blaze. He was taken to a permanent resting-place in the municipal cemetery at Vevey.4
On 13/14 July over 370 aircraft – mainly Halifaxes – took off for Aachen. At Holme-on-Spalding Moor Lieutenant Leif Erik Hulthin on 76 Squadron, one of several Norwegian pilots on the squadron, revved up the engines on T-Tommy and headed down the runway, but the Halifax crashed and blocked the runway, preventing eleven Halifaxes behind him from taking off. A strong tail wind brought the first waves of the Main Force into the target area before Zero Hour with the result that, when the first Path Finder markers were released, an unusually large number of aircraft bombed in the first minutes of the raid. The visibility was good and large areas of Aachen appeared to burst into flame at once and about 3,000 individual buildings containing almost 17,000 flats and apartments were reduced to rubble. Over 1,000 people were killed or injured. Aachen reported that that raid was ‘a Terrorangriff of the most severe scale . . .’
Fifteen Halifaxes, two Lancasters, two Wellingtons and a Stirling were lost. Three of the missing Halifax Vs were from 428 ‘Ghost’ Squadron RCAF at Middleton St. George where R-Robert on 419 ‘Moose’ Squadron RCAF was also lost. 2nd Lieutenant B J J Furey USAAF and five crew men survived and were taken into captivity.
Bomber Command turned its attention to a French target on the night of 15/16 July when 165 Halifaxes from 4 and 8 Groups attacked the Peugeot motor factory in the Montbéliard suburb of Sochaux near the French border with Switzerland. The night was clear and only lightly defended and the attack was carried out between 6,000 and 10,000 feet but the centre of the group of markers dropped by the Path Finder crews on 35 Squadron was 700 yards beyond. Only 30 bombs fell in the factory but 600 fell in the town and 132 civilians were killed and 336 injured. Five Halifaxes were lost. Production at the factory, which was only slightly damaged, soon returned to normal.
At the start of the Battle of the Ruhr ‘Bomber’ Harris had been able to call upon almost 600 heavies for Main Force operations and at the pinnacle of the Battle, near the end of May, more than 800 aircraft took part. Innovations such as Path Finders to find and mark targets with their TIs, and wizardry such as Oboe, which enabled crews to find them, were instrumental in the mounting levels of death and destruction. Little it seemed could be done to assuage the bomber losses, which by the end of the campaign had reached high proportions. There was however, a simple but brilliant device, which at a stroke could render German radar defences almost ineffective. On 24/25 July when Harris launched the first of four raids, code-named Gomorrah, on the port of Hamburg, each Station Commander was authorised to tell the crews that, ‘Tonight you are going to use a new and simple counter-measure called Window to protect yourselves against the German defence system. Window consists of packets of metal strips, which when dropped in bundles of a thousand at a time at one-minute intervals produce almost the same reactions on RDF equipment as do aircraft and you should stand a good chance of getting through unscathed.’ Strips of black paper with aluminium foil stuck to one side and cut to a length (30cm by 1.5cm) were equivalent to half the wavelength of the Würzburg ground and Lichtenstein airborne interception, radar. Although Window had been devised in 1942 its use had been forbidden until now for fear that the Luftwaffe would use it in a new Blitz on Great Britain.5 It was carried on the 791 aircraft6 which set out for Hamburg.7
Gomorrah was carefully chosen and had great significance. In biblical times it was one of the two most powerful and wealthy cities in the southern Jordan valley, the other being Sodom. These two cities warred against Abraham and God’s chosen people. After the people of Sodom insulted two visiting Angels, God decided to destroy both cities. The Lord rained upon Sodom and Gomorrah brimstone and fire out of heaven and lo the smoke of the country went up as the smoke of a furnace. In his message of good luck to his crews Harris said that ‘The Battle of Hamburg cannot be won in a single night. It is estimated that at least 10,000 tons of bombs will have to be dropped to complete the process of elimination. To achieve the maximum effect of air bombardment this city should be subjected to sustained attack. On the first attack a large number of incendiaries are to be carried in order to saturate the Fire Services.’
Led by H2S PFF aircraft, 740 out of 791 bombers dispatched rained down 2,284 tons of high explosive and incendiary bombs in two and a half hours upon the suburb of Barmbeck, on both banks of the Alster, on the suburbs of Hoheluft, Eirnsbiittel and Altona and on the inner city. The advantages enjoyed by Kammhuber’s Himmelbett system, dependent as it was on radar, had been removed at a stroke by the use of Window. The German fighter pilots and their Bordfunkers were blind.
Oberleutnant Wilhelm ‘Wim’ Johnen, Staffelkapitän 3./NJG1 who was flying his Bf 110 in the direction of Amsterdam was one who was totally confused. Though the ground stations were giving the night fighters the positions of the bombers Johnen felt that the reports were hasty and nervous. No one knew exactly where the enemy was or what his objective would be. Radio reports contradicted themselves saying that the enemy was over Amsterdam and then suddenly west of Brussels and a moment later they were reported far out to sea. In desperation Johnen flew straight to Amsterdam but he found nothing. At 1,000 feet his Bordfunker Facius reported the first enemy bomber on his Li set. Johnen swung the Bf 110 round on to the bearing in the direction of the Ruhr, thinking he was bound to approach the stream. Facius continued to read out bearings of ‘bombers’ but they were travelling at very high speed and Johnen thought that they must be German fighters. Johnen lost his patience but the tense atmosphere was suddenly interrupted by a ground station calling, ‘Hamburg, Hamburg. A thousand enemy bombers over Hamburg. Calling all night fighters, calling all night fighters. Full speed for Hamburg.’
Johnen was speechless with rage. For half an hour he had been chasing an imaginary bomber stream while bombs were falling on Hamburg. It was a long way to the port and by the time Johnen got there Hamburg was blazing like a furnace – ‘a horrifying sight’. Incredulously Johnen turned for home.
Twelve bombers were lost in action; four Halifaxes and four Lancasters, a Wellington and three Stirlings. P-Peter, a Halifax on 35 Squadron crashed shortly after take-off from Graveley when both outer engines failed and S-Sugar, a Polish Wimpy short of fuel, crash landed at Trusthorpe, Lincolnshire returning from the raid. At Holme-on-Spalding Moor there was no word of M-Mother on 76 Squadron flown by Flying Officer George Such. All eight crew lay dead in their Halifax V in Germany. One of the Stirlings that failed to return was P-Peter flown by the Australian CO on 218 ‘Gold Coast’ Squadron, 39-year-old Wing Commander Don Saville DSO DFC. P-Peter was shot down eight kilometres NNW of Neumünster by 23-year-old Feldwebel Hans Meissner, a Bf 110 pilot in 2./NJG3. Saville and six crew were killed. One man survived and was taken prisoner. Meissner, whose third victory this was, recalled after the war that:
My duty was done when the attacked aircraft went down. The object was not to kill the crew but to destroy engines and tanks. Thus I can say that with the exception of my first kills, when I was rather nervous, large numbers of the bombers’ crews always succeeded in descending by parachute. I do not mention this in order to extenuate or glorify. It was a bare fact. Our conversations prior to an action and afterwards were sober, without boasting. All of us, friends and adversaries, had at least one thing in common – death, which might have taken any of us at any time.8
Harry Fisher, a wireless operator on a 218 Squadron Stirling recalled:
It was an onerous task tossing out Window aluminium although we had been well warned at briefing. I was hampered by my oxygen tube, intercom connections, the darkness and the general difficulties of physical effort at high altitudes but I knew that it was essential to keep to the rate
of one bundle per minute and over 90 million strips of Window were dropped. Our approach to the target was from well out to sea having left the English coast over Cromer. We were in the third wave, consisting of all Stirling aircraft to attack Hamburg. Visibility was good with light winds, little or no cloud but considerable black smoke over the target. TI markers were considered to be well placed. There was fairly intense heavy flak and moderate light flak. The heavy flak appeared to burst into 4 or 5 portions which again disintegrated with yellowish flak covering an area of about 100 cubic yards. We bombed from 16,000 feet, aiming point on concentrations of green TIs. Many large fires were seen and defences appeared relatively poor. In the words of ‘Bomber’ Harris, ‘They sowed the wind, now they are reaping the whirlwind.’
Sergeant Harry Barker on 218 Squadron, adds: ‘The raid was a horrendous event with vast areas set on fire. No doubt this was a clear signal that as a terror factor the Germans did not have it all their own way in bombing. If we had known the result of our effort I think we would have said that they started it . . . But we did not know.’
Less than half of the force had bombed within three miles of the centre of Hamburg and a creep-back six miles long developed, but because Hamburg was such a large city, severe damage was caused in the central and north-western districts, particularly in Altona, Eimsbüttel and Hoheluft. The smoke of Hamburg did indeed ‘go up as the smoke of a furnace’. When dawn came on 25 July, a heavy cloud of dust and smoke hung over Hamburg and remained above it throughout the hot summer day which followed, obscuring the sun and seeming to the wretched inhabitants of the city to portend yet more devastation. It did. Over 120 American bombers of VIIIth Bomber Command made a precision attack on the docks and port facilities and the district of Wilhelmsburg, but because of the smoke rising from Hamburg only 68 aircraft were able to bomb. Severe damage was caused to port establishments and wharves, as well as to sea-going ships and docks. It was over in an hour but was repeated next morning when 54 American aircraft appeared once more and they hit the large Neuhoff power works. It appeared to 1st Lieutenant John W McClane Jr., a B-24 Liberator navigator, ‘that every section of this huge city was on fire. An ugly pall of smoke was blowing to the southwest. It looked the way that one might imagine Hell to be.’
Bomber Command Page 2
