Bomber Command

by Martin Bowman

  A hundred yards beyond reaching the road a postman and three other men were talking to some women. They immediately surrounded me and grabbed my arm, which made me think of tales (true) of lynching but I think they were all rather scared until a soldier appeared with a rifle. He was quite friendly after searching me and muttering ‘pistolen’. They all seemed to think I ought to have a revolver and seemed quite worried that they couldn’t find it. He led me to the wreckage of an aircraft in a field while we talked quite happily in a mixture of French and German and signs. To my complete astonishment he suddenly said, ‘Robertson, Shadbolt, Taylor, Green’ and pointed to an irregular lump under a tarpaulin. This was very shaking – an extraordinary coincidence that I should have wandered all this way and arrived at the bodies and wreckage of my own aircraft! He started to lead me towards the remains but changed his mind and wouldn’t let me go any further; perhaps I was looking upset. I suppose I should have argued and tried to identify but I was, in my present state, very thankful that he’d stopped me. I was sat on a blanket and given black bread, grapes (ripe this time) and his water bottle to drink from (wine tasting like nectar – my first drink for two nights and a day) while he searched me again. Quite a crowd had now gathered but they all seemed sorry for me and had great fun with my utility lighter and my packet of escape food but didn’t try to steal anything. The local bobby – fat, elderly and selfimportant – arrived on a bicycle and led me through staring throngs to the police station in the village and sat me on a chair in his office. I’d tried to look dignified on the walk but it was difficult in nearly bare feet and two days’ beard and dirt. I was questioned by the bobby, a local civilian and the French-speaking soldier and conveniently didn’t understand any leading questions except my name, number and names of the crew. They said there were six bodies and they gave four names; ‘Pilot Officer Robertson – hit in the head; Flying Officer Shadbolt, hit in the arms; Sergeant Green, navigator and Sergeant Taylor, wireless operator. They then produced an unopened ’chute, covered with blood, presumably the engineer’s; or maybe a wrong ’chute.26

  Cunliffe, Group Captain Hodder and Sergeant Freddy Tysall the chirpy Cockney mid-upper gunner were dead too. Geoffrey Willatt was the only one on the crew to survive. He would spend the next two years in Stalag Luft III at Sagan as a prisoner of war. It was a fate shared by thousands of others.

  A monotonous existence behind the wire was surely preferable to death or serious injury in the air. One of the worst fates that could befall a bomber crewman was fire. On 14 September Flight Sergeant ‘Bert’ Bradford RNZAF on 115 Squadron at Little Snoring was piloting a Lancaster II on an air test over Norfolk and he feathered two engines at 1,200 feet. In the next instant the Lancaster was hurtling towards the ground and it crashed at Magdalen Fen about four miles north of RAF Downham Market, killing six of the eight men on board. Flight Sergeant Ivan Williamson DFC RNZAF the W/T operator recalled:

  The aircraft hit with a hell of a crash. The props flew off, engines ran away and quickly caught fire. We bounced on some high ground, became airborne again. The next contact with the ground was a rail embankment, into which we nose-dived. We had 1,500 gallons of high-octane fuel aboard. The fuel tanks exploded on impact and, lit by the engines, became a wall of flaming petrol. The aircraft broke its back just behind the second spar, flipped over the embankment and Sergeant Michael Read the bomb aimer and I were airborne for about 70 yards. We passed through the wall of petrol and became flaming torches, landing in a foot of mud, water and lots of bullrushes where we burned quite furiously. Fortunately an old carpenter working nearby ran to the crash as fast as his 72 years would allow. He looked at the carnage, decided there was no hope of survivors and came over to investigate the two columns of smoke some distance away. He found us and rolled us into the mud to put out our fires. Apparently my uniform by now was almost completely burnt off. Read was in slightly better shape, although his arm was broken in two places. I had lost my helmet and was fairly well singed about my face and hands. My shoulder blade was broken and about six ribs were broken. A sizeable lump of flesh was grounched out of my groin and a perfect print of a Lancaster spar, including two bolt heads, was imprinted on my back.

  There seems no doubt that we would have burned to death if the carpenter had not been there. He had picked me by my ‘Kiwi’ accent. I insisted I was out cold but he said: ‘Oh no boy, your language, it were real thick. It were real bad.’ Most of it was directed at a nurse. It seems incredible that a Red Cross nurse should be waiting for a train half a mile away with her emergency kit. She was soon on the spot and administered injections. I was apparently quite violent, insisting she shouldn’t waste her bloody time on me but concentrate her efforts on the rest of the crew, who were much worse off. I hung my head, a little ashamed but I had no idea about all this. We were taken to Ely hospital and I was an in-patient for two months. Officers of the investigating committee questioned me. Apparently the only part of the aircraft completely whole was the engineer’s panel. I became one of Archibald McIndoe’s (a fellow New Zealander and father of skin grafts) ‘guinea pigs’ at East Grinstead hospital. I was photographed every morning and got a copy of my early grafts. I healed like a healthy animal and it wasn’t long before I was disgracing myself, getting a hard-on in my saline bath.

  I went back to the squadron as a lost soul and crewed up twice with new crews but was taken off the battle order by Wing Commander Anmaud, a great airman, both times. Neither crew survived their first op. I later crewed up with a crew who had seven trips in Stirlings but the pilot and bomb aimer went LMF. They were stripped of all rank and the crew were finally broken up after six trips, four of which were to Berlin. I went on with 75 (New Zealand) Squadron later and in all did 44 operations. I had incredible luck all the way through. It would be no exaggeration to say I missed death at least ten times during war and since. Life was cheap those pretty hard days.

  Notes

  1. 335 Lancasters, 251 Halifaxes, 124 Stirlings.

  2. Maximum Effort (Futura 1957).

  3. Lancaster The Biography by S/L Tony Iveson DFC and Brian Milton (André Deutsch, 2009).

  4. Barnes Wallis’ Bombs: Tallboy, Dambuster & Grand Slam by Stephen Flower. Tempus 2002)

  5. Crews claimed a concentrated attack on Turin. The raid concluded the Bomber Command attacks on Italian cities, which begun in June 1940. Mick Cullen and Brenda Jaggard married on 7 August 1944 at St. John’s Church, Beck Row. The Air Force padre officiated at the wedding, which was attended by over 100 guests. After the war ended they settled down in New Zealand. See Bomber Squadron: Men Who Flew with XV by Martyn R Ford-Jones (William Kimber 1987).

  6. Adapted from Maximum Effort (Futura 1957)

  7. The worst damage was in the residential areas of Lankwitz and Lichterfelde and the worst industrial damage was in Mariendorf and Marienfelde districts well south of the city centre. More industrial damage was caused in the Tempelhof area, nearer the centre and some of those bombs, which actually hit the centre of the city fell by chance in the ‘government quarter’ where the Wilhelmstrasse was recorded as having not a building undamaged. Twenty ships on Berlin’s canals were sunk. The Bomber Command War Diaries: An Operational Reference Book 1939–1945. Martin Middlebrook and Chris Everitt. (Midland Publishing 1985).

  8. Flight Sergeant O H White DFM* a New Zealand pilot on 75 Squadron also received a commission and the CGM for getting his Stirling back after the tail gunner was killed in a fighter attack and three other crewmembers had bailed out in error. White, a pre-war yachtsman, flew home navigating by the stars and crash-landed at Mepal. The Berlin Raids by Martin Middlebrook.

  9. ‘The crew’ adds Ron James ‘told us later that they had been entertained like Royalty by the Americans but Jimmy and I were soon away to hospital; Jimmy to Ely and myself to Stradishall. Apart from suffering from severe concussion, the Shingles were now a mass of blisters encircling my body (It took years for the scars to disappear). Bill Day received an immediate DFC, Se
rgeant Colin Mitchinson the DFM. Stirling EH908 R-Roger was repaired and finally written off on 12 November 1943 when the control column jammed and it crashed at Hundon near Stradishall. Nachtjagd: The Night Fighter versus Bomber War over the Third Reich 1939–45 by Theo Boiten (Crowood 1997).

  10. Intruders over Britain: The Luftwaffe Night Fighter Offensive 1940 to 1945 by Simon W Parry (ARP 2003). On 8 November 1943, Schmitter and his Bordfunker, Uffz Felix Hainzinger, were killed when their Me 410 was shot down near Eastbourne by Squadron Leader W H Maguire DFC and Flying Officer W D Jones on 85 Squadron flying a Mosquito XII. Schmitter was posthumously promoted to Major and awarded the Oak leaves to his Ritterkreuz.

  11. The Berlin Raids by Martin Middlebrook. A second Stirling on 90 Squadron crashed in the Ijsselmeer with the loss of all the crew.

  12. Chorley. When John Greet’s wife have birth to a daughter, she was christened Beverley.

  13. On 23/24 September 1944 Kevin Hornibrook’s 20-year-old brother F/O Albert Keith Hornibrook on 61 Squadron was KIA piloting a Lancaster on the operation to Münster.

  14. 349 Lancasters, 221 Halifaxes, 104 Stirlings.

  15. The Bomber Command War Diaries: An Operational Reference Book 1939–1945 by Martin Middlebrook and Chris Everitt. (Midland 1985).

  16. See Handley Page Halifax: From Hell to Victory and Beyond by K A Merrick (Chevron Publishing 2009)

  17. In a separate operation 30 OTU Wellingtons and 6 Oboe Mosquitoes and five Halifaxes of the Path Finders bombed an ammunition dump in the Forêt de Hesdin in northern France.

  18. Bomber Boys by Mel Rolfe (Grub Street 2004, Bounty Books 2007).

  19. Into the Silk by Ian Mackersey (Robert Hale 1956). Four other members of his crew survived and were taken into captivity. Pilot Officer Earle George Dolby DFC RCAF and Warrant Officer Oliver Lambert DFM the rear gunner were killed.

  20. On 8/9 September when 257 bombers, including five American B-17 Flying Fortresses, attacked the German long-range gun batteries near Boulogne the Oboe Mosquitoes marked the target with green LB TIs and red TIs. The marking and bombing was poor and the gun batteries were largely untouched.

  21. Middlebrook.

  22. Bomber Command by Max Hastings (Pan 1979).

  23. Stirling EE973 was written off after the crash landing at Witchford. ‘Our next trip’ adds Lawton, ‘the bombing of the entrance to the Mont Cenis tunnel in France, was uneventful and that made us a lot happier. Then Stirlings were taken off bombing as they were outclassed by Lancasters and were deathtraps, 5,000 feet below the Lancs’ where they were just right for all the flak and bombs from above.’ Late in November 1943 Bill Day’s crew finished their tour. ‘We were loath to leave,’ says James. After losing a total of 43 aircraft in six months, or to put it another way, two complete squadrons, to say that we enjoyed our stay seems rather paradoxical but it was true.’ Five of the crew went on to complete a second tour; Ron James on B-17 Fortresses on 214 Squadron in 100 Group (Bomber Support).

  24. 13 Halifaxes, 13 Lancasters and 8 Stirlings, or 5.6% of the force.

  25. Spirit of Russia had flown 93 sorties when it was re-assigned to 189 Squadron in October 1944. By the time it was taken off ops, the last on 2/3 February 1945, EE136 had 109 bombs painted below the cockpit.

  26. Bombs And Barbed Wire: My War in the RAF and Stalag Luft III, Geoffrey Willatt. (Parapress Ltd, 1995).

  CHAPTER 3

  Silver Wings in the

  Moonlight

  I dreamed that my lover had gone for a moonlight walk.

  I spoke to the moon but the moon wouldn’t talk.

  Hubert C ‘Nick’ Knilans had left Delavan High School in Wisconsin in 1935 and in the summer months he milked cows and worked the horses on the family farm in Walworth County. Delavan was a thriving manufacturing town about half way between Milwaukee and Chicago where Knilans looked for jobs when winter came. But Knilans’ ambitions lay elsewhere. In October 1941 when his call-up papers had run out, the 24-year-old had driven up to Canada to join the RCAF with the intention to become a ‘Yank’ in Canadian clothing in Bomber Command. At that time the United States was still neutral but many adventurous young Americans were not prepared to wait for the call to arms. They ‘defected’ to Canada and ‘signed on’ to join the RAF with the intention of becoming a fully fledged pilot on fighter or bomber aircraft; men like Pilot Officer Hubert Clarence ‘Nick’ Knilans, who became a Lancaster pilot on 619 Squadron at Woodhall Spa, one and a half miles from the Victorian spa town. At the time most Americans wished to remain neutral, millions choosing to follow the progress of the Blitz and the war in Europe by tuning in to Edward R Murrow, head of CBS European Bureau in London for his penetrating radio broadcasts, This Is London. Millions more digested the column inches graphically written by reporters who were syndicated in many hundreds of newspapers throughout the USA, but not all columnists were as enthusiastic as Murrow when it came to championing the British cause. Boake Carter, who was syndicated in 83 newspapers with a combined circulation of more than seven million readers asked, ‘Where does the Roosevelt Administration derive the idea that Americans want to go gallivanting forth to play Sir Galahad again?’ Walter Winchell, syndicated in 150 newspapers, 8.5 million-circulation, struck home; saying, ‘The future of American youth is on top of American soil not underneath European dirt.’1

  American observers in Germany and career officers such as General Raymond Lee, the US Military Attaché in London, also remained sceptical about Britain’s massive industrial commitment to heavy bombers. During a lunch at the Dorchester, Lee told the assembled British officials and four Air Marshals that ‘the British had no proof yet that their bombing had been any more effective than the German bombing of England’. He added, ‘I thought they were asking the United States for a good deal when they wanted it to divest itself of all its bombers and devote a lot of production capacity to the construction of more bombers, thereby committing the US to the policy of reducing Germany by bombing, without affording sufficient proof that this was possible.’ Attitudes had changed little after America entered the war. In April 1942 the American air attaché in London reported to Washington that, ‘The British public have an erroneous belief, which has been fostered by effective RAF publicity, that the German war machine can be destroyed and the nation defeated by intensive bombing.’ While General Lee never flew an ‘op’ in a Lancaster as Murrow would, he did at least venture northeast to see what Bomber Command was capable of and he observed RAF bomber crews at a station somewhere in England.

  They were a queer conglomeration, these men – some educated and sensitive, some rough-haired and burly and drawn from all parts the Empire, Great Britain, Canada, New Zealand and Australia . . . Some, of them were humming, some were singing, some were laughing and others were standing serious and thoughtful. It looked like the dressing room where the jockeys sit waiting before a great steeplechase . . . [At take-off] the control officer flashed a green ray for a split second, which was the signal that this plane was designated for take-off. Its roaring grew louder and louder as it dragged its heavy tail towards the starting point like a slow, nearly helpless monster. About twenty yards away we could just discern a vast dinosaurish shape; after a moment, as if stopping to make up its mind; it lumbered forward, raising its tail just as it passed us and turning from something very heavy and clumsy into a lightly poised shape, rushing through the night like a pterodactyl. At this instant, a white light was flashed upon it and a Canadian boy from Vancouver who was standing beside me, put down its number and the moment of departure. It vanished from sight at once and we stood, staring down the field, where in a few seconds a flashing green light announced that it had left the ground . . . A great calm settled over the place as the last droning motors faded out in the distance and we all drove back to the control room where a staff hang onto the instruments on a long night vigil . . . I went to sleep thinking of the youngsters I had seen, all now 150 miles away; straining their eyes through a blackness relieved only by the star-s
pangled vault above them.2