After fighting their way through one of the most one-sided aerial battles of the bomber war, the battered and bruised Main Force are approaching the target area…

The initial marking failed at Nuremberg. Some Pathfinders missed the wind change and ended up over Lauf, a small town with similar H2S characteristics to Nuremberg but about ten miles to the north east. While some realised the mistake and did not drop their markers here, at least four aircraft did.^[1] When the Main Force crews arrived a few minutes later, they found two sets of well-defined skymarkers over almost solid cloud: one at Nuremberg and one at Lauf. Indeed, one 463 Squadron crew reported three groups of Wanganuis visible when they bombed at 01.20.^[2] The result was very scattered bombing which spread to the east and then crept back along the bombers’ path of approach. The “target [was] hard to pick out,” recorded 467 Squadron navigator Flying Officer Arnold Easton.^[3]

But there was one other complication. One of the Pathfinder Mosquitos, which was intended to drop a green ‘floater’ target indicator as part of the early target marking at Nuremberg, suffered H2S failure and had also missed the wind change. He turned at the false turning point to the north and short of the real one above the Thuringer Wald, and when a large city appeared at his estimated time of arrival over Nuremberg and started throwing up searchlights and flak, he assumed he was at the target and dropped his markers.^[4] But he was actually at Schweinfurt, some fifty miles to the north west, which had the misfortune to lie on approximately the same bearing and distance from the false turning point as Nuremberg was from the real one. Following Main Force aircraft which had also missed the wind change then came up on a defended area that was marked with a falling target indicator, so also thought they were at Nuremberg and dropped their bombs. Some realised their mistake as they passed the ‘real’ target shortly afterwards but at least 34 aircraft returned bombing photographs that were definitely plotted within three miles of the centre of Schweinfurt^[5] and it was later estimated that about 120 bombers had dropped their loads on the city.^[6] Two aircraft fell to the flak defences there. Middlebrook records that the citizens of Schweinfurt initially thought that they had been the main target of the night’s operations, but when the German High Command realised that the city had been bombed accidentally they suppressed any mention of it in the German press.^[7]

But back to Nuremberg. The skymarkers were scattered, first by the Pathfinders themselves and then by the wind, but the cloud meant that searchlights were not effective. Two aircraft were shot down by flak, two collided and were seen to go down in flames and five more fell to the nightfighters which were still hanging around.^[8] There were other dangers too:^[9]

 We were late getting to the target and I don’t think we got a photo for we were chased by a fighter and then a very twitchy Lancaster gunner tried hard to shoot us down. – Flight Lieutenant Walter Marshall, 467 Squadron

On three engines after the earlier combats with the JU88, Dan Conway’s Lancaster was running behind schedule. In fact, it would be the last aircraft over Nuremberg, bombing at 01.35 – thirteen minutes after the attack had been scheduled to end. With an engine out and the airspeed indicator useless, they limped away for home.^[10]

The bombers planned to continue south for another 30 miles after leaving the target before they turned southwest towards Stuttgart and then west to home. The nightfighters needed to land to refuel so their attacks dropped off a little but even so they still accounted for at least four more aircraft on the way out. Pilot Officer Keith Schultz was attacked by a JU88, but his gunners drew hits on its wings and fuselage and they claimed it as probably destroyed.^[11] Flak claimed a bomber at Strasbourg and another at Le Tourquet on the way home.^[12]

Having beaten the odds over Europe, the surviving Waddington aircraft were close to base when Mother Nature played one last trick on them. Fog began to form. “I can distinctly recall a sharp deterioration in the weather after return to base but this did not affect me personally,” said Squadron Leader Arthur Doubleday later,^[13] who was the first pilot back. Most aircraft managed to beat the fog to the airfield, but B for Baker was among those which diverted, landing at Wittering, 35 miles to the south. They had been struggling with a supercharger fault and a brake fault for almost the entire trip, but the brakes cleared themselves on landing.^[14]

The weather was more of a problem for those aircraft struggling home on less than their full complement of engines. Bill Brill, on three since being hit by bits of an exploding bomber near the target, had a little difficulty but eventually got in, the last aircraft to land at Waddington by a long shot. “He always caused me some anxiety,” wrote good friend Arthur Doubleday after the war.^[15] On shutting down at their dispersal a belt of .303 ammunition was found embedded in the cowling of the busted engine.^[16]

Dan Conway, however, had rather a more interesting time of it. Navigation had been difficult without an airspeed indicator and, crossing the French coast, it was discovered that their Gee set was also unserviceable. Shortly afterwards two fighters flew at them “aggressively”, but once they were recognised as Spitfires and the colours of the day had been fired off, the two aircraft formated on the struggling Lancaster and provided an escort until they reached the coast. Conway briefly thought about landing at the emergency airfield at Woodbridge which they passed, “FIDO equipment in full blaze,” but decided to leave it to “those aircraft worse off than ourselves.” He later admitted that “another consideration could have been that we were due to go on leave that day”! Navigating by dead reckoning, the relative volume on their otherwise unintelligible radio telephone and a lucky pinpoint, they found Waddington but it was not over yet.^[17]

There was the usual problem with fog, as the Drem system was not visible in the denser patches. Having some trouble seeing and lining up on the runway, the approach must have looked spectacular. Just before passing the Control Van it was necessary to do a steep turn to regain alignment. We then landed smoothly and safely, well down the runway. I remember the startled faces of those assembled to welcome the boys home. Afterwards some of them claimed I had put my starboard wing tip outside the Control Van and was lucky not to have hit it. There was no choice, for going round again in those conditions was not on, with our fuel perilously low.

467 Squadron lost two aircraft on the Nuremberg raid, those captained by Bruce Simpson (on his thirtieth trip) and Roland Llewelyn (sixth). While all 463 Squadron crews got home safely, it was clear that it had been a disastrous night. The 5 Group Air Officer Commanding, Air Vice Marshal Ralph Cochrane, was visiting Waddington when the bombers came back and he asked Arthur Doubleday how the trip went. Doubleday replied, “I believe the Jerries scored a century before lunch today.”^[18]

Doubleday was not far from the mark. In all, 94 bombers failed to return from Nuremberg, plus one special operations Halifax and an intruder Mosquito. The number eclipsed the 73 missing from Berlin a week ago and the 79 missing from the Leipzig raid in February 1944. As well as the 94 aircraft, of course, Bomber Command also lost 94 trained crews. 545 airmen were killed in action and 159 became prisoners of war. Amazingly, fifteen of those shot down evaded capture.^[19]

616 aircraft reported attacking the target and while a large number undoubtedly dropped their bombs on the correct city, because of the cloud not one of them was plotted in the target area at the time of bombing. No post-raid reconnaissance was carried out either, so it’s unclear how much damage was actually done to Nuremberg. The Night Raid Report resorts to quoting a German communiqué, which said that some damage was caused and some casualties incurred among the population. Damage was scattered between Schweinfurt, Nuremberg and numerous small towns and villages outlying both cities. The civilian death toll as reported by Middlebrook was sixty Germans and fifteen foreign workers killed by the bombing in Nuremberg and just one child killed in Schweinfurt.^[20]

After his eventful landing at Waddington, Flight Lieutenant Dan Conway walked to the Mess with the WAAF Station Officer:^[21]

…a motherly and usually happy soul, who was most distressed […]. For myself, I was unhappy about the losses but glad to feel Old Mother Earth beneath my feet as the fog began to disperse.

The worst night in the history of Bomber Command was over.

This post is part of a series called 467 Postblog, posted in real time to mark the 70th anniversary of the crew of B for Baker while they were on operational service with 467 Squadron at RAF Waddington, Lincolnshire. See this link for an in-depth explanation of the series, and this one for full citations of sources used throughout it. © 2014 Adam Purcell

There was not a little surprise at Bomber Command’s airfields when it was announced this morning that the squadrons would be operating tonight. It was quite late in the moon period with a bright half-moon expected so the surprise turned to dismay when they found out that the planned trip would be a long one.

The forecast was for cloud over Germany^[1] which was expected to provide the Main Force with cover from the moonlight. The plan was that once the moon set the return journey could be made in darkness. The forecast was subsequently altered following two weather reconnaissance flights which showed the expected cloud was not present, but the operation proceeded. The target, in the south of Germany, was Nuremberg, and 795 aircraft were sent.

162 aircraft would be involved in operations designed to support the Main Force tonight^[2]. 49 Halifaxes, simulating a large force perhaps bound for Hamburg or Berlin, were to lay mines in the Heligoland area, approaching the enemy coast at the same time as the Main Force. 13 Mosquitos were to attack nightfighter airfields. Three spoof raids, also using Mosquitos, were planned to Aachen, Cologne and Kassel. Sundry operations included small forces of Mosquitos to Oberhausen and Dortmund, Stirlings laying mines off Texel and Le Havre, a number of ‘special’ sorties and some OTU ‘Bullseyes.’^[3]

The Nuremberg briefing was routine except there was some talk among the crews that this was the first major attack for a long time to penetrate deeply into Germany so late in the moon period. – Flight Lieutenant Dan Conway, writing after the war^[4]

It was a maximum effort at Waddington with 35 aircraft dispatched, the most out of any one station.^[5] It could have been even more but one pilot (Pilot Officer Anthony Tottenham) was ill just before take-off so he and his crew missed out. LM475 B for Baker was the third Lancaster to depart Waddington, taking off at 21.42. The normal crew were on board with the exception of bomb aimer Jerry Parker, who had been replaced on this trip by the Squadron’s Bombing Leader, Flight Lieutenant Patrick McCarthy (we last saw McCarthy when he flew to Frankfurt with Phil Smith a week and a half ago). There were two early returns to Waddington: Flying Officer Bruce Buckham returned just after midnight after the rear turret failed on ME701 and an hour later Pilot Officer Noel McDonald came back in LL792 when the electrically heated suits of the bomb aimer and both gunners failed.

The bombers passed their last positive visual fix in England, a vertical searchlight set up at Southwold, and crossed the North Sea. They made their landfall near Brugge in Belgium. The bombers were in bright moonlight and, ominously, there was no cloud.

The first bomber fell to flak guns near Namur, just after the bombers turned east for what Middlebrook called the ‘Long Leg’. A second was shot down by flak near Aachen (where red Target Indicators were to be dropped for the spoof raid on that city), two more at Bonn and another near Koblenz. But tonight would belong to the nightfighters. The German controllers decided early that the Heligoland Halifaxes were indeed a diversion. To cover an attack anywhere in the southern half of Germany they had ordered their aircraft to take off and assemble at two radio beacons: one called ‘Ida’, south-east of Cologne, or, for the later-arriving aircraft, another called ‘Otto’, north of Frankfurt. Unfortunately for the bombers, these beacons sat virtually astride their planned route.

The first bomber to fall to a nightfighter was a 467 Squadron machine: LM376 with Flight Lieutenant Bruce Simpson at the controls. Middlebrook quotes Unteroffizier Erich Handke, the radio operator on the aircraft that shot him down^[6] near the German frontier:

Weather was marvellous – clear sky, half-moon, little cloud and no mist – it was simply ideal, almost too bright. It was a Lancaster flying nicely on a steady course so that, when we were comfortably positioned underneath and from about fifty metres, Drewes [his pilot] opened fire with the upward firing cannon at one wing which immediately caught fire. We followed the Lancaster for five minutes until it crashed below with a tremendous explosion.

The Lancaster had fallen to scräge Musik, or ‘jazz music’, a relatively new German innovation. At the time of the Nuremberg raid this weapon was still unsuspected by the Allies.^[7]

Happily, Simpson and his entire crew were able to bale out more or less unhurt. The same, however, could not be said for many other crews over the next hour or so. The spoof raid on Cologne, intended to draw fighters away to the north, failed when the German controllers recognised the Main Force heading almost straight for the fighters waiting at the Ida beacon.  Low cloud developed shortly after the bombers crossed the Rhine, silhouetting them “like flies on a table-cloth”.^[8] And nature had one more trick up its sleeve:

Due to some unusual and unforeseeable quirk of the weather, vapour or condensation trails, not normally found below 25,000 feet, had started to appear behind each bomber. The dead-straight streams of pure white cloud could not have given away more clearly the path the bombers were taking^[9].

Everything was now in favour of the defenders. As Handke suggested, weather conditions were perfect: bright moonlight, low cloud, an unrecognised weakening of the expected wind that scattered the stream to the north a little,^[10] and now the contrails. Add to this the mass of fighters lying in wait just ahead at Ida, and the stage was set for carnage.

The combats began in earnest south of Aachen. Sergeant Ray Tanfield, Flight Engineer in LM450 (Dan Conway’s aircraft), counted seven bombers going down in flames at one point. with another eleven wrecks burning on the ground.^[11] Conway’s navigator, Sergeant Joe Wesley, would normally record on his navigation log any reports of aircraft going down, but not on this night. Conway had told the crew to stop mentioning them:^[12]

We could not afford to have the intercom overloaded with reports when at any second, one of them might call up to report a fighter. Self preservation overruled statistics and I did not propose to become one.

“Now I know how those poor bastards in the Light Brigade felt”, Conway thought to himself. Earlier they had seen a Lancaster drifting across their path only 200 feet above them. “We could have shot it down ourselves with no trouble,” Conway said. Middlebrook records an instance of exactly this happening somewhere on the Long Leg when a 101 Squadron Lancaster fell victim to the itchy trigger finger of an unknown Halifax gunner whose aircraft had drifted across the top of it. Five of the crew of the Lancaster were killed.^[13]

Pilot Officer Fred Smith, in LL788, counted thirty aircraft shot down between Aachen and the target. Interestingly he reported noticing on the last half-dozen trips that many aeroplanes had been seen going down in flames from their operational height for no particular reason. “I would suggest that [the] enemy are using [a] new type of ammunition,” he speculated in the Operational Record Book. In fact this was likely one of the earliest reported sightings of scräge Musik.

Just after crossing the Rhine, twenty Mosquitos left the bomber stream and headed for Kassel, “dropping German-type fighter flares to draw the enemy fighters and also Windowing furiously in an attempt to make themselves look like a large force of heavy bombers.” It was a perfectly executed ‘side-step’ but, apart from plotting it in their operations rooms, the Germans “ignored it completely.” Another spoof had failed to distract the defenders.^[14]

The battle raged on. A small number of German fighters were shot down by either Serrate Mosquitos or by bombers, but the scoreboard was otherwise woefully lopsided. By the end of the Long Leg, fifty nine bombers lay blazing on the ground along the route. All had been shot down in the hour after midnight. “It is unlikely that a single hour, before or since, has seen a greater rate of aerial destruction,” wrote Middlebrook.^[15] Some pilots – among them Rollo Kingsford-Smith – recognised that with the contrails came great danger and willingly disobeyed orders by flying higher than briefed to get above the zone. “From there I could see a mass of contrails below us; they were like a formation of American day bombers,” said a 76 Squadron pilot who did the same thing.^[16]

Many Waddington crews were attacked. One – DV240 under the command of Pilot Officer Roland Llewelyn – was shot down by a fighter quite close to the Ida beacon. The bomb aimer, wireless operator and mid-upper gunner bailed out and became prisoners of war, but the other four were killed.[17]

Other crews were luckier. Pilot Officer Dave Gibbs of 467 Squadron, flying DV277, was threatened by a Messerschmitt ME210 soon after passing Cologne. The fighter was driven off by the mid-upper gunner after the guns in the rear turret failed. Dan Conway’s aircraft was attacked twice by a Junkers JU88 on the final leg to the target. His gunners both fired at it and saw smoke coming from one of its engines so they claimed it as damaged. “Gunners did a good job, saw JU88 first both times,” he later reported.^[18]   But Conway’s port outer engine was damaged in the attack so it needed to be shut down. The Lancaster carried on on three. This was one of five JU88s claimed damaged on this night, amongst a small number of other fighters.

B for Baker itself had a close call when a nightfighter shot down another Lancaster five hundred yards behind and to one side of them, the bomber exploding in the air. “That night I thought my time was up,” wrote wireless operator Dale Johnston to his brother later, “and how I thought of you…”^[19]

A 578 Squadron Halifax pilot named Pilot Officer Cyril Barton was also attacked on the way to the target. His aircraft was badly damaged and three crew members, including the navigator, bailed out after a miscommunication. With one engine knocked out and the aircraft badly damaged, he pressed on, bombed the target and attempted to fly home despite the absent navigator. Pushed off track by the wind, he made landfall near Sunderland, ran out of fuel and crash landed. The three remaining crew members were only slightly injured but Barton died in the crash. He was awarded a posthumous Victoria Cross for his heroism on this flight.^[20]

The bombers turned south over a large forest called the Thuringer Wald, with no easily-recognisable features or towns nearby. Add to this the length of the leg they had just flown without a positive fix, the disruption to navigation from evasive action to escape fighters and the incorrect broadcast winds and it is clear how easy it was to miss the exact turning point. “The average bomber turned well to the north of the correct point and slightly short of it”, wrote Middlebrook.^[21] This would prove critical in what was to come. The fighters, meanwhile, saw the turn and reported it to their control rooms – and now, for the first time, the nightfighters’ running commentary began mentioning Nuremberg. While fighter activity decreased slightly after the turn, they were still around in force and ten more bombers fell in the first half of this leg.^[22]

With the target area looming ahead, Squadron Leader Bill Brill ran into the debris of an exploded Lancaster. Something hit his aircraft (ME614) and an engine stopped, but he flew on. Just after dropping his bombs a fighter attacked but he turned quickly and the fighter didn’t come back for a second go. A second engine failed and they were close to bailing out but when one of the engines came back to life he decided to fly home.^[23]

Next: The bombers arrive at Nuremberg

The last couple of weeks of March 1944 were quite busy for the Waddington bomber crews. In the last ten days, they had flown four operations and had three scrubbed. Tonight they would be operating again, five of the crews involved being on their third consecutive raid in as many nights.[1]

The target was what the 467 Squadron Operational Record Book called “an old favourite:” Essen. It would be the first major attack on that “already half-devastated” city, home to a good portion of the German arms industry, in about eight months. The crew of B for Baker were on the Battle Order for this trip but for unknown reasons wireless operator Dale Johnston was not included. He was replaced by Pilot Officer Thomas Ronaldson, who appears to have been a ‘spare bod,’ completing operations with many different crews after his own pilot was posted tour-expired in December 1943. Curiously Phil Smith’s logbook does not mention Ronaldson by name, containing only ‘crew as above.’

Two aircraft were not ready in time for take-off and there was one early return but the groundcrews nevertheless managed to get a total of 31 aircraft away from the two Waddington squadrons. They were part of a total force of 705 Lancasters, Halifaxes and Mosquitos on their way to Essen. Other heavy bombers out tonight attacked railway facilities in Cortrai in Belgium and laid mines off the French Atlantic coast while Mosquitos flew Serrate patrols and attacked airfields in Belgium, Holland and Northern France.[2]

The Main Force flew east from their airfields heading towards Holland, passing close to the Dutch town of Julianadorp, which that night was subjected to a raid by three Mosquitos. The most recent few targets attacked by large forces of bombers had mostly been far inside Germany, and it’s likely that the German defenders were once again expecting a deep penetration. The Main Force flew a course that looked like it might have been headed for Hanover, and indeed a small force of Mosquitos made a harassing raid on that city, but just past the Ijsselmeer they suddenly turned south east and headed straight for the Ruhr. More Mosquitos raided Aachen but the bombers’ true target was now dead ahead.

Not that the crews could see it, looking at the ground. They had been flying over a solid layer of cloud since they had been half-way across the North Sea. This was not entirely unexpected but the forecast, reproduced in the Night Raid Report, had not been particularly confident and included the words “very uncertain conditions” for the north of the country:

Probably much strato-cumulus, but cloud may clear right away.

Or maybe it wouldn’t. The crews found that the cloud had not cleared at all. One pilot, albeit only on his second trip, was unnerved by the complete lack of anything to be seen: [3]

The navigator said to me, “Five minutes to the coast.” And then he said we were crossing the coast. And it was pitch black. There were no searchlights; there were no guns, nothing. And I thought, “Something queer here. I think we’re lost.” And on we went, and we were ten minutes from the target, and there was still nothing. Eventually, not long after that, I saw some flares go down ahead of me. So I realised then we weren’t lost.

Despite a small risk of some strato-cumulus cloud over the target itself, the met. boffins thought that at Essen it would “probably” be clear. On the strength of that, the attack was planned using ‘Musical Parramatta’ ground-marking tactics: Oboe-equipped Mosquitos would drop red Target Indicators that would be backed up visually with greens by Pathfinder crews following in Lancasters.

There was only one tiny flaw in the plan.

The forecast was entirely wrong.

The crews, trailing huge white contrails at high levels, arrived over the target to find it blanketed in 10/10ths thick cloud up to about 10000 feet. The Mosquitos dropped their target indicators but they quickly dropped out of sight in the murk. Consequently most crews could only bomb the estimated position of the target indicators via their glow coming through the clouds. At least two 463 Squadron crews saw no Pathfinder pyrotechnics at all and bombed on estimated time of arrival instead.

The cloud made it difficult to see any results of the raid while it was in progress, but there were signs that the bombing had been reasonably concentrated. The glow of fires was visible up to a hundred miles from the target and two distinct palls of thick black smoke were becoming evident as the crews left the target. Despite this, though, a number of crews were not certain if the raid had indeed been successful, and couldn’t understand why the Pathfinders had not carried skymarker flares to transition to an ‘Emergency Wanganui’ attack as soon as the solid cloud cover at the target was recognised. “An excellent Wanganui night”, lamented Wing Commander Arthur Doubleday. In fact the plan did include Wanganui flares, but they were dropped by Mosquitos as intended two miles east of the actual aiming point to distract the flak guns. In this they succeeded, with flak flashes seen nearby the falling parachute flares, and they also served to assist the Main Force in locating the general area of the target, but finding definite markers at which to aim the bombs proved more frustrating for the crews. “Wanganui backing up would have given [a] more definite aiming point than was possible with TI passing through cloud,” suggested Pilot Officer Laurence Hawes.

The cloud did, however, mean that searchlights were all but ineffective. While the heavy flak guns fired a loose barrage it was “not like old times.”[4] Some fighters had been led astray by the raid on Courtrai and the rest, probably distracted by the feint raid on Hanover, were held in reserve deeper in Germany in anticipation of an extended penetration by the bombers. There were reports of one or two combats on the way in to the target (there is some evidence that these were possibly attracted by the contrails[5]) but in general the fighters caught up with the stream late, claiming one bomber near Bonn just after leaving the target and four more on the way to Brussels. Flak got two bombers over the Ruhr and one when the stream turned for home near Charleroi. One more aircraft was seen to go down to unknown causes on the south-eastern run out of the target. These nine were the only aircraft that failed to return – a loss rate of just 1.2%. One returning bomber was damaged beyond repair by a fighter attack and two were written off in landing accidents.[6]

Every bombing photograph obtained by returning crews showed solid 10/10ths cloud, and the 463 Squadron diarist thought it was too early to assess results yet. As it turned out however, the Pathfinders, with the benefit of the highly accurate Oboe, dropped what the Night Raid Report called an “excellent concentration” of target indicators on the aiming point, and enough bombers aimed accurately at the correct glow to drop a “great weight” of bombs on the centre and south of the town. The Krupps munitions factories were seriously damaged.

 

This post is part of a series called 467 Postblog, posted in real time to mark the 70th anniversary of the crew of B for Baker while they were on operational service with 467 Squadron at RAF Waddington, Lincolnshire. See this link for an in-depth explanation of the series, and this one for full citations of sources used throughout it. © 2014 Adam Purcell

Sources:

Just after 10pm on the night of 24 March 1944, more than 800 bombers were bearing down on Berlin. The first Waddington aircraft bombed at 22.27 and the last at 23.01. But much stronger winds than realised were playing havoc on navigation and timing. The crew of Flight Sergeant Ed Dearnaley, for example, first sighted Pathfinder flares behind their aircraft. They overshot the target, turned around and lost so much time flying back into the headwind that they bombed at 22.57, the second last aircraft from Waddington to do so.

Despite flying doglegs to try and waste some time on the final leg to Berlin, the tailwind was too strong for Dan Conway’s crew and they also overshot the aiming point. So they turned back and went around again:

This was quite an experience. Here we were chugging along at something like 120kmh groundspeed, taking about 15 minutes. Meanwhile other aircraft were flashing past us at over 600kmh. There was no way of avoiding them, so we just held on and prayed.[1]

They ended up bombing on a reciprocal heading to the rest of the stream. “We would not have been too popular,” Conway later admitted.

As always, the Germans defended their capital city fiercely. The fighters were still active, making many interceptions and shooting down four aircraft over the target itself and at least two more just south-west of the city.[2] There were many searchlights in the area and the heavy flak guns put up a fearsome barrage, claiming seven more bombers. With thin cloud below the bombers and explosions from bursting cookies all around, it was a “most dramatic spectacle”.[3]

In the end, even the Pathfinders were not immune to the effects of the wind. While their initial markers appear to have fallen close to the aiming point, later in the attack the concentration drifted some miles to the south-south-west. The Night Raid Report places the blame for this drift squarely at the feet of the wind, though it notes that German decoy flares may also have contributed. Either way, like on many Berlin trips the raid became rather scattered, despite the Master Bomber’s reported encouragement (“Keep it up, good show!”[4]).

Squadron Leader Phil Smith and his crew bombed target indicators burning on the ground, visible through “thin filmy cloud.” Their bombing photo showed “fire and cloud.”[5] It probably looked something like this one, though this is from a different crew and was taken some eleven minutes later:

After bombing, the plan was to continue on past Berlin for some 40 miles before turning to the west near Luckenwalde, to avoid known areas of heavy defences. But the wind was still making navigation difficult and many crews wandered. As a result, the Night Raid Report records that aircraft were engaged by defences at places significantly off the planned track: Leipzig, Münster and Kassel without apparent casualty, and Magdeburg, where four victims fell to flak and two to nightfighters, Nordhausen  where one bomber was shot down by a nightfighter, and Osnabrück (six to flak and one to a nightfighter).

But it was the Ruhr area that aircrews feared the most, and though a dogleg to the north had been designed into the route to avoid it, disbelieving crews found themselves flying into what at the time was probably one of the most heavily defended areas from air attack on the planet. The experience of Warrant Officer Clayton Moore’s crew was probably not unique: [6]

 An unusual and most heated argument blew up between our Captain (Bill Siddle) and the Navigator (Dick Lodge) concerning our position. Siddle insisted that we were heading for the heart of the dreaded Ruhr and the Navigator insisted this was far from being the case: he was using the latest wind speed and direction radioed from Bomber Command, anyway, we were in the centre of the bomber stream – we couldn’t all be wrong and off course! […] Finally, the argument ended with the Navigator being invited up to the flight deck to ‘see this bloody lot ahead for yourself’. There followed a brief pause in the dialogue after which the Navigator was heard to remark, ‘You’re dead right Skipper, that is the Ruhr – let’s get to hell out of it…’

No fewer than seven bombers fell to the Ruhr flak guns. It was, said Flight Sergeant Roland Cowan afterwards, “no fun.”

The extent of the navigational chaos became clear when crews got pinpoints upon crossing the enemy coast on the way home. The crew of B for Baker came out 20 to 30 miles south of track, and they were not unusual. At least six other 463/467 Squadron crews reported the same thing. But all the Waddington aircraft returned safely, two diverting to nearby Metheringham.[7]

This was the sixteenth and last of the mass raids on Berlin (though the Light Night Striking Force – Bennett’s Mosquitos – would continue to harass the city until the end of the war). It was also by far the most expensive. In all, 72 bombers failed to return, almost nine percent of the force sent. This operation was a good example of how things could go wrong for Bomber Command, even with mechanisms in place to impart some flexibility in case things changed after the bombers had taken off. The ‘floating’ zero hour concept and the Broadcast Winds system were good in theory but as seen on this raid Bomber Command was by this time a very large and complex organisation and just one error could cascade throughout the entire raid. In this case that error would appear to have been misjudging the true strength of the wind which then led directly to navigational difficulties. In an effort to reduce losses, Bomber Command’s tactics at the time involved an organised ‘stream’ flying a carefully designed route that would avoid known areas of heavy defences wherever possible. Accurate navigation to remain in the (relative) safety of the stream and to stay clear of those ‘hot’ zones was therefore critical. Navigating to the required standard of accuracy was very difficult without an accurate wind value and as seen particularly in the Ruhr area on this trip, wandering off track could have disastrous consequences. When the error was made by a single navigator, just one aircraft blundered over a defended area and could have been shot down. But when it was in the ‘official’ broadcast winds it became a systemic error and affected the entire bomber stream, causing loss rates like those seen on this Berlin raid.

There were two other interesting incidents that also occurred on this night. One of the aircraft that failed to return from Berlin was DS664 of 115 Squadron. Somewhere near Schmallenberg (east of Kassel and, unsurprisingly, well south of the planned homeward track), it was shot down by a nightfighter. Four members of the crew died and two made successful parachute jumps, but the rear gunner’s ‘chute had been damaged during the attack. Sergeant Nicholas Alkemade jumped anyway, apparently preferring death by impact than by fire. Incredibly, his fall was apparently broken by a fir tree and he landed in a deep snow drift, surviving with only a few superficial cuts and bruises. He was captured by the Germans (who naturally were reportedly suspicious of his story) and remained a prisoner for the remainder of the war.

The other episode is perhaps one of the most famous stories of all that came out of the Second World War. At a camp known as Stalag Luft III, seventy six prisoners of war escaped through a tunnel dug out under the wire. The Great Escape, as the episode became known, would turn to tragedy. Seventy three of the escapees were recaptured and fifty were executed as a result. Just three of the men made ‘home runs’. Stalag Luft III was near the town of Sagan (now Zagan in Poland), about 100 miles south east of Berlin. It’s not inconceivable that while they were breaking out, the escapees could hear the bombs as the attack on the German capital progressed.

 

This post is part of a series called 467 Postblog, posted in real time to mark the 70th anniversary of the crew of B for Baker while they were on operational service with 467 Squadron at RAF Waddington, Lincolnshire. See this link for an in-depth explanation of the series, and this one for full citations of sources used throughout it. © 2014 Adam Purcell

Sources:

Since 18 November 1943, Bomber Command had made no fewer than fifteen major attacks, each of 380 aircraft or more, on Berlin. The last time the Main Force visited the German capital had been in mid February, more than a month ago, and there were some who believed that “we might well have finished with Berlin.”[1] But they were wrong.

It was a dull and hazy Friday morning at Waddington on 24 March and the two Australian Squadrons received word that an operation to the Big City was to be laid on for that evening. Some Pathfinder squadrons, looking at the prevailing poor visibility and chance of further fog in the evening, were expecting a cancellation about lunchtime. Indeed, John Searby writes that a planned American day raid to Berlin had been cancelled on the strength of a weather recce flight which found solid strato-cumulus from the German coast all the way to Nordhausen.[2]  But a mid-morning flight discovered that, as forecast, the cloud had begun to break up along the route for that night’s planned raid, so it was decided to go ahead. Also on the forecast was a strong north-westerly wind of up to 60 miles an hour. “For the assembled crews in the many briefing rooms throughout the Bomber Groups it was very much the mixture as before”, wrote Searby. “The navigators shrugged their shoulders – a strong headwind pulled back the groundspeed on the way home but it was nothing new.”[3]

As well as more than 800 aircraft in the Main Force, various other diversionary operations were planned for the evening. Eleven Mosquitos were to fly ahead of the Main Force across Denmark dropping Window as they went, then turn south and bomb Kiel. Nineteen more Mosquitos, led by two Pathfinders equipped with H2S, were to bomb Berlin ten minutes before the Main Force arrived, dropping Window and spoof fighter flares. 150 aircraft from Operational Training Units would make a sweep west of Paris, without dropping any bombs, as a distraction while the Main Force was on its way to Berlin. Meanwhile other Mosquitos were to attack Münster and Duisburg and airfields in Holland and Belgium, and carry out Serrate patrols.[4]

467 Squadron put nineteen crews on the battle order for tonight, and 463 mustered up fourteen. There appears to have been a delay taking off from Waddington, perhaps caused by a wait for bombs to be loaded. Many crews reported needing to try and make time up enroute and indeed one crew, ten minutes behind the last bombers in the stream at the first turning point on the route (near Hull), decided that was too much and, after jettisoning their bomb load half way over the North Sea, returned to base.[5] This was one of four crews to return early to Waddington.

The bomber stream headed north east over the North Sea towards Denmark. They were well out to sea when the first signs of trouble began to appear. Flight Lieutenant Dan Conway was the pilot of a wind-finder crew from 467 Squadron. While still in Gee range, his navigator Sergeant Joe Wesley calculated a wind from the north that was considerably stronger than that forecast. “He expressed his surprise to me”, wrote Conway after the war,[6] “and I told him that if that was his considered finding to report it back [to base].”

Wesley’s wind report was one of many received by the various squadrons and passed on to Command Headquarters. It would appear that the commanders decided that the wind could not possibly be as strong as the reports they were receiving, so the ‘Broadcast Winds’ were reduced to what they considered a more appropriate level.[7]

Calculating their courses using a broadcast wind value that was some twenty to thirty miles an hour less than reality meant that most crews in the Main Force were now being pushed south much faster than they expected. The result was that the stream began to scatter as aircraft wandered over the heavily defended areas that the route had been carefully designed to avoid. The Germans drew first blood at Sylt (twenty miles south of the nominal track) where six bombers fell to heavy flak. Four more were shot down at Flensburg[8] and some crews were crossing as far south as Kiel.[9] Up to seven more aircraft are believed to have been destroyed by flak on the outward journey at locations that are not recorded in the Night Raid Report.

It was also as the crews crossed the Danish coast (or German, depending on how far south they had drifted) that the enemy nightfighters arrived. Having quickly recognised the Paris sweep as the distraction it was, the fighter controllers sent their aircraft to the Hamburg-Heligoland area. The fighters got stuck into the bomber stream early, destroying two each at Sylt and Flensburg and one each at Rostock and Prenzlau. Searby quotes a Flight Lieutenant Moore of 83 Squadron: [10]

German night fighter activity was the fiercest I had ever known it to be and so many aircraft were being shot down in our vicinity that we stopped recording them and detailed all available crew members to maintain a sharp look-out.

Somewhere enroute, the half-hourly Group broadcast also included a change to the planned zero hour, bringing it forward by five minutes. This was a result of the stronger than forecast winds aloft and in recognition that the southerly run in to the target would be completed with a significant tailwind. The alteration, however, caused much confusion. The 463 and 467 Squadron Operational Record Books are full of comments like these:

We heard T.O.T. alteration but as we were late it made us even later. (Flight Lieutenant Jack Colpus)

Earlier T.O.T. unexpected and impossible to make up time already wasted. (Pilot Officer Leo Ainsworth)

Briefed for fixed T.O.T. and arranged timing for same but received W/T message z-5. No chance at all to catch up on this timing. (Flight Sergeant Roland Cowan)

Received zero hour correction, it made no difference to us as we were already late due to delay before take off. (Squadron Leader Phil Smith)

Perhaps these crews had not yet grasped the true wind situation. Other comments in the ORBs were much more positive, and Dan Conway even called the correction “very helpful as we were already running early.”

Next post: The bombers arrive over Berlin.

This post is part of a series called 467 Postblog, posted in real time to mark the 70th anniversary of the crew of B for Baker while they were on operational service with 467 Squadron at RAF Waddington, Lincolnshire. See this link for an in-depth explanation of the series, and this one for full citations of sources used throughout it. © 2014 Adam Purcell

Four nights ago, forty Waddington aircraft took part in a highly successful attack on the German city of Frankfurt. On each of the three days immediately after that raid, the crews were briefed for more operations but each time the trips were scrubbed. They were briefed again on 22 March and – finally – this time they went. The target again was Frankfurt, and it was to be another big raid with more than 800 aircraft sent.

The night’s ‘offering’ from 463 and 467 Squadrons was 36 aircraft. Among those on the battle order was Phil Smith and his entire crew: Ken Tabor, Jack Purcell, Jerry Parker, Dale Johnston, Eric Hill and Gilbert Pate. They took Lancaster R5485 to see if they could work out why multiple crews had complained that it would not take a full bomb load to a Lancaster’s normal operating height. Also flying tonight, on their first trip, was Flying Officer Dudley Ward and crew. It’s likely that they had been listed to fly on the last few scrubbed operations, and one suspects that they felt trepidation but also a certain degree of relief that their tour was finally underway when they took off at 19.03 in LL881, nineteen minutes behind the first aircraft from Waddington.

One Lancaster returned early. Pilot Officer Bill Mackay and crew encountered significant mechanical trouble in DV240: their starboard inner engine failed at 14,000 feet on their initial climb to cruising height, and along with it went the electrics and intercom in the mid-upper turret, the main compass, the autopilot compressor and the bomb sight. They turned around immediately, jettisoned their bombs and the Operational Record Book shows they were back at Waddington before half past eight.

Other Bomber Command operations tonight involved Mosquitos attacking Dortmund, Oberhausen and airfields in the Low Countries, radio counter-measure sorties, leafleting and Serrate patrols. There was also a large mining effort in Kiel Harbour and the Fehmarn Channel (off Denmark) and diversion raids on Berlin and Hanover.[1]

These last few operations, in particular, were a critical part of the plan, designed to draw attention away from the Main Force attacking Frankfurt. The chosen route for the bomber stream was a novel one. From their bases in England, the bombers flew towards Denmark. Further to the north, and also heading towards Scandinavia, were the 146 Halifaxes and Stirlings of the mining force, on German radar looking for all the world like a significant attack bound for Berlin. But half way across the North Sea, the Main Force suddenly turned south east. Now they looked like they might have been making for Hanover, Brunswick or even via a southerly route to Berlin.

Ahead of the main bomber stream flew a number of Mosquitos. They dropped target indicators, Window and spoof fighter flares near Hanover, then went on and did the same near Berlin. Following Mosquitos then bombed the markers.

The result was confusion on the part of the German fighter controllers. The Bomber Command Night Raid Report describes the “complex movements” undertaken by the nightfighters as they attempted to intercept the bomber stream. Those that took off from airfields in Holland were first sent out over the North Sea following a radio beam to find the bombers before they crossed the coast. Some combats occurred in the Emden area and the first bomber was shot down near Leeuwarden. The fighters next caught up with the stream near Osnabrück, where they accounted for five more. But then, probably deceived by the diversion raid, the fighter controllers announced over the running commentary that Hanover was the main target for the night and many fighters headed that way.

But before they got to Hanover the bombers turned sharply to the south. Many fighters saw this and followed, claiming a further five bombers along the way, and it was here that Pilot Officer Len Ainsworth of 467 Squadron reported seeing “considerable” fighter activity. But it took a full 17 minutes after the first markers had gone down at the real target – Frankfurt – before the controllers directed their forces there. Meanwhile at least two bombers fell to flak near the point where the stream turned. Interestingly some crews reported seeing rockets fired from either the ground or the air in the same area, though it is not known whether these accounted for any bombers.[2]

Not far ahead now was Frankfurt. The weather was clear on the final run in to the target with a little low cloud thickening in patches. Heavy predicted flak was being fired, which later loosened into a moderate barrage called by the Night Raid Report “rather more accurate than on the previous visit.” Numerous fighters were seen and many crews reported that the searchlights were highly active but, as Pilot Officer Clive Quartermaine described them, “a little clueless.” Three bombers were shot down by fighters and four by the ground defences over the target.

Early target marking was bang on. The first six salvoes of Newhaven ground markers, all falling as scheduled before zero hour (which was 21.50), were within a mile of the aiming point and spread on each side of the river running through the centre of the city. Three minutes after zero hour there was already a significant concentration of incendiaries burning in the middle of the city.

Later in the attack the bombing became a little scattered with smaller concentrations developing up to five and a half miles north and west of the aiming point. But it didn’t matter. It had, said Flying Officer Jack Dechastel, “every indication of a concentrated attack.” Flying Officer Jim Marshall described how the “whole of centre of target area” was “well alight.” Phil Smith said it “should be [a] very successful prang if PFF were on target.”[3]

After bombing, the stream carried on beyond the aiming point for a short distance south. On this leg searchlights were quite active and many crews were coned but only one bomber is known to have fallen here. Once again, though, crews were jettisoning incendiaries that had hung up along the route, and it wasn’t making the crews feel especially happy. “Why couldn’t these have been jettisoned in the sea as they light our bombers up?” complained Pilot Officer John McManus, captain of S for Sugar (R5868).

Near Mannheim the stream turned west for a short time (one more bomber being shot down from the ground near Trier), then northwest towards the coast. Over the middle of Belgium the last few casualties were incurred: one aircraft to flak and five to fighters.

All Waddington aircraft returned safely, but not without a couple of scares. In an incident worryingly reminiscent of the loss of ED606 with Pilot Officer Graham and crew on board a week ago, while the two Squadrons were arriving back at Waddington an unknown Lancaster “crossed across [the] centre of [the] aerodrome”, and nearly took out another aircraft. It was well and truly “too close for safety”, and Pilot Officer Victor Baggott, who was flying the second aeroplane, called it the “stickiest” incident of the trip. And Pilot Officer James McManus didn’t notice it at the time but at some stage during the flight it’s likely the tailwheel on the venerable S-Sugar collected a piece of flak. They found out when the tyre collapsed on landing, though no great damage was done. “It is hoped”, remarked the Operational Record Book drily, “that the rear gunner wasn’t in his turret or he would have had a rough ride.”

In all, 33 aircraft failed to return from this raid, a tick over four percent of the force sent. The effect on Frankfurt, however, was severe. German records[4] said the damage was worse than the earlier raid on the city, and gas, water and electricity services were cut in half the city “for a long period.” Industrial areas to the west of the city suffered badly. This was the second of what turned out to be three major raids on the city inside a week: as well as the two Bomber Command night raids, 162 American B-17s which had been sent to attack Schweinfurt on 24 March could not reach their primary target and used Frankfurt as a secondary instead, causing more damage. The three raids destroyed 90,000 homes, killed 1,870 people and made 180,000 more homeless.[5]

Phil Smith and his crew completed a relatively uneventful trip. They discovered that the old Lancaster – R5485 – did make it all the way to its normal operating height (indeed, they bombed from 21,000 feet, well inside the range of bombing heights recorded in the Operational Record Books), but “only by running the engines at above the recommended maximum temperatures.”[6] Less experienced crews, perhaps, had not been prepared to run the engines over temperature and so could not use full power – which explained the aircraft’s reluctance to climb when fully laden. Armed with this information, the Squadron’s engineers decided it was a cooling problem and replaced all of the machine’s radiators. Following the work there were no further complaints about the aircraft, and the mystery had been solved.

This post is part of a series called 467 Postblog, posted in real time to mark the 70th anniversary of the crew of B for Baker while they were on operational service with 467 Squadron at RAF Waddington, Lincolnshire. See this link for an in-depth explanation of the series, and this one for full citations of sources used throughout it. © 2014 Adam Purcell

Sources: