Though cloud made interceptions difficult for the night fighters, 22 Halifaxes and Lancasters were lost. Mullins was awarded an immediate DFC for his exploit. He added a Bar later in the war. Cochrane was awarded the DFM. Reg Mullins was posted back to Australia but promised to come back for Pat and he did. The couple married at St. James Church, Grimsby in 1946.
On 23/24 March, 143 aircraft took off for an attack on the railway yards at Laon. The weather in the target area was clear but the Master Bomber ordered the attack to be stopped after 72 aircraft had bombed. Two Halifaxes were lost. Twenty Lancasters of 5 Group, including 617 Squadron dropped delayed action bombs on the Sigma aero-engine factory at Vénissieux in the Rhône Valley south of Lyons and 70 miles south-west of Geneva without loss but flare marking in hazy conditions was imperfect and the Dam Busters were ordered to return to the factory two nights’ later. Marking was much improved but the raid by 22 Lancasters was largely unsuccessful with bombs being scattered. After an intensive practice bombing programme was carried out, 19 Lancasters including 15 of 617 Squadron, returned to finish the job on 29/30 March. This time the bombing was concentrated around very accurate markers but a noticeable increase in defences was reported by the returning crews. On 5 April, 17 Lancasters and one Mosquito of 617 piloted by Cheshire led 132 Lancasters from the other 5 Group squadrons in the first group operation independent of PFF marking against an aircraft factory and repair facility at Toulouse in southern France, 60 miles north of the Spanish border. The target was well prepared and marked for the incoming Lancasters to carry out concentrated bombing and the target was obliterated. Only an occasional crater dotted the fields beyond.
Five nights later, 17 Lancasters and one Mosquito of 617, once again operating alone, devastated the main German Signals equipment depot at St-Cyr in the Paris region, two miles west of Versailles, after Cheshire let his markers go from 700 feet having diving down from 5,000.
Between 8 February and 10 April 1944 the dozen French targets allocated to Bomber Command had been destroyed or very seriously damaged. Nine of these targets had been wiped out on independent 617 Squadron operations. Early in April, intrigued by the accuracy that 617 Squadron had achieved at night against such small targets the Dam Busters were visited by Lieutenant General Carl ‘Tooey’ Spaatz, C-in-C of the United States’ Expeditionary Air Forces, and General James Doolittle of Tokyo bombing fame. The American generals were anxious to discover the secret of 617’s success. Cheshire told them that an unexpected problem had arisen – too many bombs were falling in the same crater! Inevitably, a challenge ensued between SABS and the famed Norden bombsight but the contest never took place because of the increase in operations.58
‘Bomber’ Harris meanwhile, had realized that blind marking was unlikely to prove successful against German cities, principally Berlin and so he had waited patiently for clear conditions over the ‘Big City’. At ‘morning prayers’ on Tuesday 21 March the weather forecaster informed his Chief that conditions appeared favourable, so Harris ordered another maximum effort on Berlin.
In his message read out to crews Harris said:
Although successful blind bombing attacks on Berlin have destroyed large areas of it, there is still a substantial section of this vital city more or less intact. To write this off, it is of great importance that tonight’s attack should be closely concentrated on the Aiming Point. You must not think that the size of Berlin makes accurate bombing unimportant. There is no point in dropping bombs on the devastated areas in the west and south-west. Weather over the target should be good. Go and do the job.
But a later forecast revealed that cloud would probably cover the German capital and the attack was cancelled at 18.00 hours. Harris had to wait another three days, until Friday the 24th when the pre-raid weather report said that there was a good chance of clear skies at Berlin, but had added that there was a possibility of 10/10th thick stratocumulus. This time 811 aircraft were detailed for the raid and immediately support operations were laid on. Over 140 OTU aircraft were detailed to fly a diversionary ‘sweep’ west of Paris, 19 Oboe Mosquitoes would attack night fighter airfields in Belgium, Holland and France and 11 Mosquitoes would make a ‘spoof’ raid on Kiel. There were still doubts about the weather and an alternative target, Brunswick, more likely to be clear of cloud, was included in the Battle Order, but just before take-off Berlin was confirmed as the ‘target for tonight’.
‘Rex’ Jackson’s crew on 166 Squadron had by now completed seven ops. Roy Keen the flight engineer recalls:
When we had joined the squadron, we took over aircraft that were normally flown by crews who were on leave at the time. We could normally get up to about 26,000 feet, the higher the better as far as we were concerned, but on the night of 24 March ND620 was brand new, on its first trip. Before we took off, I’ll never forget that the wireless operator said: ‘We’re going to get the chop tonight.’ The skipper immediately pounced on him.
Take off at several 5 Group stations was delayed for two hours because of fog. A 20 mph wind was expected but soon the 70-mile long bomber stream ran into very strong winds, which scattered the aircraft and made navigation tricky. Over the Baltic the jet stream was so strong that aircraft were registering ground speeds approaching 360 mph. When crews made landfall on the Danish coast many navigators realised that they were much further south than they should have been, as Roy Keen recalls:
One hundred knot winds were experienced that night, instead of the anticipated 60-knot tailwind. And we could not climb above 21,000 feet. I tried all ways to get more height, but we couldn’t. The bomb load was normal at about 12,000lbs. The skipper tried trimming the plane, but nothing would work. It’s like a car; you sometimes get one that won’t do what it’s supposed to. We got coned by searchlights on the way in over the coast and we had to jink about like hell to get out of it. George Reed our spot-on navigator was going barmy!
The bombers on the diversionary raid west of Paris had already turned for home and when the Main Force crossed the German coast east of Rostock and bypassed Stettin the JLO became convinced that the target was Berlin. The attack was very scattered at first and some of the TIs were seen burning about 10 miles south-west of the target. The raid developed into a ‘terrific overshoot’ because of the strong winds but equally, many crews who overshot turned back to bomb.
For the first time since the raid on 23/24 August 1943, a master bomber, Wing Commander Reggie ‘Sunshine’ Lane DSO DFC, the cheerful CO of 405 ‘Vancouver’ Squadron who was on his third tour, was used. Wing Commander Maurice A Smith DFC, one of the finest low-level Master Bombers, Controllers, Masters of Ceremony, call them what you will, recalls:
Master Bombers had enough experience to know what they were about; speaking voices that came over on VHF clearly and maybe a little more maturity at around 30 years of age than the majority of bomber crews in their early 20s. Presumably they had been noticed in their squadrons and seen to lead reliable crews. These they very reluctantly had to leave behind, except for the navigator, when the smaller and more agile Mosquitoes came into use.
Wing Commander Lane’s radio call sign was ‘Redskin’. His deputy was Wing Commander E W ‘Bill’ Anderson, an experienced PFF navigator now on the staff of 8 Group Path Finder Headquarters and who was lying on some cushions in the nose of a Mosquito of the Meteorological Flight. His call sign was ‘Pommy’. The two ‘cheer leaders’ were to liven up the proceedings with their ‘back-chat’. Wing Commander Lane was heard in spite of jamming but the Bomber Command intelligence narrative said afterwards that ‘the Master of Ceremonies’ was generally more helpful in giving encouragement that in directing the bombing’. Although unable to give little positive direction to the crews he nevertheless gave much general encouragement in a distinctively Canadian and often excitable series of remarks such as, ‘Those bastards wanted a war; now show them what war is like.’ Other men remember the calm and cultivated English voice of the Deputy Master Bomber occasionally contributing a remark.59<
br />
Bill Anderson has written:
The ground below was covered in thin cloud, which was disappointing but would not affect the attack as we had the usual skymarking method laid on to deal with this eventuality. As we came near to where we thought the big city must lie, we saw the curtain raiser, a dummy attack to mislead the fighters, starting away behind us over Kiel, a beautiful display of pyrotechnics. There was a good deal of flak and searchlights to the south but we felt sure it could not be Berlin. A few minutes later the first sky-marking flares went down to the north but though we opened all the taps, we were late. This was most infuriating because all my best lines depended on our being over the target itself. ‘Come along in, boys, it’s warmer in here than out there!’ can’t be said with much conviction from a place twenty miles outside the danger area. Luckily, ‘Sunshine’ was dead on time. The attack was in full swing when we arrived and through the thin wisps of low cloud we could see red and green ground markers which the boys had dropped as well as the sky-marker flares. The defences were firing away busily but the searchlights were not working so well together as usual. The cones were not so clear-cut and odd beams were straying about. I think the cloud was foxing them a little. And I saw something new, peculiar rows of lights that floated slowly upwards. I didn’t realize what they were until I went to a cinema some weeks later and saw London’s rocket defences in action.
Everybody has watched a man painting a fence. There is always an irritating little bit that he will keep missing, so that you long to grab the brush and just give one dab to cover it. There was a patch right in the centre of Berlin where nothing had fallen. I wanted to stretch out my hand and smear some of the other lights over it. Luckily for my peace of mind, some obliging type, possibly a painter by trade himself, did the job just before the end with a nice dollop of incendiaries.
We felt so bad about turning up late that we hung about for a while after the attack should have been over. Having exhausted all the stock of expressions including the odd quotation from Shakespeare and having decided that the bombing had now finished completely and that there was no great future in staying any longer, I produced the carefully worded and highly indelicate ‘good night’ to Hitler. Hardly had the last rich syllable rolled unctuously off my tongue when a voice came back out of the darkness; a rich Canadian voice, ‘Cut the cackle and drop us off another flare, I can’t see a——thing.’ So we stayed and talked with him a little to mollify him and then pushed off home.
On the way back we were coned by searchlights for some time. And lying in the nose of the aircraft, I had leisure to analyse my exact feelings. I was scared; there was no doubt about that. Yet I knew that this was like my lumbago, an uncomfortable sensation but somehow beside the point. What really did matter was that I had let the party down by arriving late. That it had not affected the operation was beside the point. I had broken the first rule of the Pathfinder Force that I had so often drummed into others, which is not that you must be clever, nor that you must be brave but simply that you must be reliable. On the way home I saw six aircraft shot down by night fighters. They each started as a little flame getting gradually bigger and then suddenly falling, an explosion of light as they hit the deck and then a patch of fire burning quite steadily.60
The bomber stream was spread out over 50 miles of sky and stretched back for another 150 miles. Single engined Wilde Sau and twin-engined Zahme Sau fighters took advantage and they and the flak claimed 44 Lancasters and 28 Halifaxes. On 578 Squadron at Burn where 15 aircraft were away by 19.08 hours for a target time of 22.30 hours, three Halifaxes made early returns and three were shot down. On H-Harry only the bomb aimer and wireless operator survived. On C-Charlie only the navigator and one air gunner survived. There were no survivors on Y-Yorker. X-X-Ray had quite an exciting night even though the aircraft did not reach Berlin as the flight engineer recalled:
Our aircraft was fitted as an experiment with a wing bomb bay overload petrol tanks instead of the usual overload tanks for long haul sorties, which were normally fitted to the main bomb bays. Our route to target was across the North Sea to Denmark across the peninsula and a long flight over the Baltic Sea until we were to turn to starboard for our run to the city of Berlin. After we had crossed the peninsula, I requested the captain’s permission to commence pumping the petrol from the overload tanks (we were unable to feed this fuel direct to the motors) into the two main petrol tanks. After a short period it was apparent that although the overload tank petrol gauges were slowly dropping, the main tank gauges were not showing an increase in their holding of petrol. This situation was reported to the captain and after a discussion on possible reasons for this problem we could only assume that the fuel was being pumped out into the atmosphere. It was decided that the pumping should proceed. Once the pumping was completed, the captain requested a situation report from the navigator and me as to the possible flight duration with the fuel available. We came up with the report that we would only make the Low Countries on our return trip. The decision was made to abort the operation and we turned for home. The next decision was the disposal of our bomb load. After a crew discussion we decided to attack Kiel on the way home. We ran off to the correct heading and attacked the city from about 20,000 feet as the flak was so intense. We dived to 2,000 feet and made for home across the North Sea. It appeared after investigation that two valves in the new lines to the wing bomb bay overload tanks had been fitted incorrectly. Unfortunately the Air Ministry would not allow us to count our attack on Kiel towards our number of operations required before a rest period was granted.
Four of the Lancasters that were lost were on 166 Squadron. Roy Keen recalls:
Because the winds were stronger we were over the target twenty minutes early and we were too long over the target. I don’t think it paid to hang about over Berlin longer than you needed to! We couldn’t find anything to bomb the first time, so we went round again. We assume it was a fighter that actually took us out from underneath, but nobody saw it. None of the gunners reported anything. There was a step from the flight engineer’s position down to the bomb-aimer’s compartment. I was sitting on that step looking out of the window and we had this horrible crash, a funny kind of sound, very loud and I looked around and my panel had disappeared. There was a fire between me and George Reed the bomb-aimer. The trouble was it was so quick and violent that there was nothing anyone could do – we were just straight down, screaming down. It was very hard to move with the g-forces.
Did I feel scared? No, not really to be quite honest. We got the order to bail out, so I thought I wouldn’t argue with that, there was no point in stopping! I can remember putting my chute on and something said to me ‘take your time, don’t panic, you’ve got time’. So I took my gloves off so that I could use my hands properly, put my chute on and tried to go head-first out of the hatch. I got wedged in it, as the hatch was about 18 inches wide and I passed out. I was like a pendulum on the way down – if I had been compus mentus I could have stopped that, but I was a bit woozy. I can’t recall pulling the ripcord – I obviously did, unless I snagged it on something. It definitely worked – I’m a member of the Caterpillar Club! Next thing I remember is I woke up some way down, feeling very sick. The straps on my chute were holding my head and I felt like going back to sleep. I must have passed out again and eventually woke up with my arms round a tree trunk wondering what the hell had happened! The fur collar of my suit was all burnt, so there must have been fire getting through the hatch. I heard afterwards that the aircraft blew up about a minute and a half after my skipper and I got out. The rest of the crew perished. I can’t understand it, as the bomb-aimer definitely got out before me, otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to. He took the hatch off, but he was killed. Somebody said he was very upset at leaving his girlfriend just before, but I wouldn’t have thought it had anything to do with it.61
I pressed my parachute release and clambered down from this tree, finding that I couldn’t walk as I’d been hit in the leg and b
ackside. I was hopping about, hopping mad shall we say! I was fortunate in that I was very close to a road. I was trying to decide what to do when I heard a whistle, which I thought odd at that time of night as it was pitch black and freezing cold, but it was my skipper! His face was covered in blood, but he said ‘How are you?’ and I said ‘I’m all right apart from I can’t walk! I can hop along . . .’ He and I agreed that it wasn’t a time to be heroic; we came across a hut on the edge of the forest and we bashed on the door. We heard voices inside but nobody came to the door, so maybe they experienced the explosion of the aircraft above them. We struggled on to what was the forester’s house and knocked on the door. The chap came out in a bit of a temper, calling us schwein and terrorfliegers and goodness knows what! The lady eventually took us in and she bathed my Skipper’s face and got him tidy; then they phoned the army. I was taken to hospital and then we travelled by rail, in a cattle truck (eight horses or forty men!) to Stalag IIIA.
Seventy-two missing bombers was the price paid by Bomber Command for the delivery of 2,493 tons of bombs on Berlin’s vital war factories this night. A Path Finder Lancaster on 97 Squadron that was damaged by flak over the Ruhr came down in the sea. Six on Flying Officer P H Todd’s crew were picked up by the Germans but Sergeant Sidney Robson the flight engineer died. Pilot Officer Keith Shambler Simpson RAAF piloting a Halifax on 158 Squadron had returned early with engine trouble and ditched in the sea just off Winterton on the Norfolk coast but the aircraft exploded as it hit a mine. All the crew perished. Flying Officer Michael Arabin Wimberley on 78 Squadron at Breighton tried to land his Halifax on one engine at Cranfield but it crashed, killing all the crew. A damaged Lancaster with a dead tail gunner on board crashed into a Flying Fortress at Dunsfold but without further loss of life. Two Halifax aircraft on 1659 CU crashed in England on their return from the diversion operation.
Bomber Command Page 36
